We regret to record the death of Johnny Hooper of the National Yacht Club and Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dún Laoghaire, who for many decades was in the forefront of Irish sailing performance and boat class development.
The son of National YC Commodore Sean Hooper, he was for years a top performer in Fireflies, before adding Olympic Finn sailing to his many interests afloat.
In 1960, he teamed up with the late Peter Gray to race the Flying Dutchman as part of the largest Irish Olympic sailing campaign ever mounted. Officially the Rome Olympics, the sailing events were staged at Naples, and Hooper and Gray returned home having achieved Ireland's first individual Olympic sailing race win.
Johnny enjoyed pointing out that the win came about in unusual circumstances. The Italian Flying Dutchman crew had crossed the line first, with Ireland second, but the United States had a large team at Naples, and a US Navy detachment observing the Flying Dutchman racing gave its full support to the Irish duo's protest that the supposedly victorious Italians had missed a mark of the course. The protest was upheld, giving Hooper and Gray the race victory.
Johnny Hooper was also instrumental in the introduction of the Optimist dinghy to Ireland. The versatile little boat had originated at Clearwater in Florida, where a Swedish ship's captain whose vessel was berthed there was so impressed by its simple yet effective concept that he acquired several and brought them home to establish a class at his club in Sweden.
That club subsequently hosted a Finn event in which Johnny Hooper was racing. Having seen the Optimists there, he returned home convinced that Ireland should establish a fleet of the little boats, and so it came to pass.
Johnny Hooper's high standards of sportsmanship permeated everything he did afloat, and he will be much missed. Our thoughts are with his family and his many friends made during a very long and active life.
WMN
