Laser dinghy sailor Eve McMahon of Howth Yacht Club now leads at the Youth ILCA 6/Laser European Championships going into the last day of racing in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Ten races have been sailed with significant changes in the top of the rankings on the penultimate day.

The current Irish ILCA6 youth world champion is now on the cusp of a Youth ILCA6 Europeans title with a six-point advantage going into Wednesday's fifth day and final two races to decide the new 2022 EurILCA 6 Youth European champions.

McMahon scored a 3, 3 to become the new women’s overall leader with 33 points, followed by Emma Mattivi ITA (21-1) and Petra Marendic CRO (1-9) with 45 and 49 points respectively.

The overnight leader Roos Wind NED (14-36) is ranked now fourth overall with 50.

Claudia Adan Lledo ESP (4-5) is fifth with 63.

Conditions were once again sunny and hot, with the winds varying from 8-10 knots.

Luke Turvey

McMahon's clubmate Luke Turvey dropped from tenth to 14th place in the Boys event but could still regain places in today's final rounds.

Results here

Months of study for June's Leaving Certificate examination have not blunted Howth's Eve McMahon's ambition on the International ILCA/Laser race track. 

The Paris 2024 hopeful is back on the circuit and lying second overall at the ILCA6/Radial Youth European Championships in Greece.

The 2022 World Youth world champion in the class had a race win and also scored a fourth place on Monday with two more days of racing remaining.

The Final series started on Monday. Two new races were held for all six fleets in the regatta, being eight now in total as per scheduled.

A new sunny day with 10-14 knots of wind and choppy sea conditions prevailed this afternoon on water.

The overnight leader Roos Wind NED (6-7) continues to lead the Girl’s overall championship with 23 points, but is now closely followed by McMahon IRL (1-4) and Emma Mattivi ITA (2-2) with 27. Petra Marendic CRO (3-5) is fourth with 39.

Klara Sobczak POL and Claudia Adan Lledo ESP are 5th and 6th overall with 54. Thea Lubac FRA (10-1) won the last race today and climbed to the 7th place with 63 units.

Adriana Castro Nuñez ESP (29-25) is still on top of the girl’s Under 17 championship and ranked 13th overall, followed 30 points behind by Maria Vittoria Arseni ITA with 103. The third girl’s U17 place is now for Signe Brinkert NED with 139.

Also racing in Thessaloniki, in the Boys event is HYC clubmate Luke Turvey in tenth overall.

Results here

Two Howth Yacht Club Olympic campaigners will share in The Olympic Federation of Ireland Paris Scholarships fund, as preparations are already underway for the Summer Olympic Games in Paris 2024.

Dublin's ILCA 6/Laser Radial campaigners Aoife Hopkins and Irish Sailor of the Year Eve McMahon - who begins her Leaving Certificate examinations this morning - will receive $15,000 each from the Federation.

A total pot of $350,000 will be distributed to Olympic hopefuls with the Women’s Hockey team awarded the team grant of $100,000. The fifteen individual grants to a total of $250,000 were awarded to athletes from twelve sports.

The funding for the grants is primarily provided through a combination of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Olympic Solidarity programme funding and OFI funding, split $250,000 from the IOC and the remaining $100,000 from the OFI to allow for a greater number of scholarship awards in Ireland.

Aoife Hopkins

The scholarships aim to support the athletes in their preparation for Paris, and to assist on the qualification journey. Athletes were nominated by the national federations and are representative of a mix of Olympians targeting a second Games, and athletes targeting an Olympic debut.

Making the announcement, Team Ireland Chef de Mission for the Paris Olympic Games, Gavin Noble, said,

“Thirty-five individual nominations were received from nineteen member sports for the Paris Scholarship fund, and today we are delighted to formally announce our Paris scholars and of course our support of the women’s hockey team. In the Tokyo cycle, twelve scholarships were awarded, and from those nine athletes qualified for the Games, with two finalists in the Tokyo Olympics. Naturally, we are aiming to build on those results. Through the support of the International Olympic Committee Solidarity Fund, and with the additional backing of Permanent TSB, Allianz and Deloitte, we are able to fund more athletes, to a higher level than ever before, and it is very much part of our performance and commercial strategy that we continue to move in this direction.”

Details of all recipients are below:

TEAM GRANT - $100,000

Women’s Hockey Team

The Women’s Hockey Team were awarded the team grant of $100,000 to assist with their preparations towards Paris 2024. The team consists of both experienced players who competed in the Tokyo Olympics, and emerging talent looking to make their Olympic debut in Paris.

INDIVIDUAL GRANTS – $15,000 PER PERSON

The transition from junior to senior sailing is difficult at the best of times, and the Irish “Sailor of the Year 2021” Eve McMahon of Howth has found that the arbitrary dictates of personal birth dates means that she has been dealing with the demands of the Leaving Cert in her education, while at the same time taking her departure from the junior scene to move towards the challenges of the bigger world.

Yet she did it in considerable style in April’s Youth Nationals at Ballyholme, where the 38-strong ILCA 6/Radial fleet from all over Ireland may not have been the most numerous class, but there’s no doubting that it was the sharp end of the entire regatta. And even with some days providing strong onshore winds with waves of such size that they had to be handled individually rather than as a sequence, she finished in style with two wins on the final day, and the title with it.

Howth teen Eve McMahon booked her place to the Youth World Sailing Championships in The Hague in July when she sailed to success at the Irish Youth Sailing Championships on Belfast Lough today. 

The reigning World Youth Champion in the single-handed ILCA6 (formerly the Laser Radial) won her 38-strong event in convincing fashion by winning both final races on Sunday to bring her tally to five race wins on Belfast Lough.

Clubmate Rocco Wright who had been leading the class and a group of six challengers since racing began on Thursday finished second overall.

Rocco Wright Photo: Simon McIlwaine/Wavelength Images

In so doing, both McMahon and Wright reached the standard to be nominated to represent Ireland in The Hague in the girls and boys divisions respectively of the World Sailing event.

Sienna Wright of Howth Yacht Club Photo: Simon McIlwaine/Wavelength Images

There were further celebrations in the Howth YC camp when Sienna Wright, Rocco's younger sister won the ILCA 4 (formerly Laser 4.7) class by a comfortable 13-point margin.

Ballyholme is famous for the big rolling seas with a northeast breeze of strength and on Super Saturday at the Youth Sailing Championships, the ILCA6 Under 17 world champion Eve McMahon showed her strength with a dominant display in strong winds and big seas on Belfast Lough.

The Howth teen sailor won three out of four races sailed in her 38-boat fleet to move ahead of clubmate Rocco Wright and Cork's Jonathan O'Shaughnessy (Royal Cork Yacht Club), both one time leaders at the event.

Overall victory is now to be decided in Sunday's final two races.

Johnny Flynn and Ethan Spain in the 29er, Sienna Wright in the ILCA 4, and Bobby Driscoll in the Topper 5.3 won all of their races in their respective divisions.

Ballyholme Yacht Club in Bangor on Belfast Lough is the host club for this year’s Irish National Youth Sailing Championships from 21st until 24th April.

The cream of youth and junior sailors from across Ireland will compete in the Laser/ILCA 6, 29er, 420, Topper 5.3 and ILCA 4 classes and making a welcome return for 2022, the Optimist class.

The four days of racing will be on the virtually tide and hazard free Belfast Lough, organised by a club with many years of experience of hosting world, international and national events. There are four days of racing for the ILCA 6, 29er, 420 and Optimist classes, from Thursday 21st April – Sunday 24th and three days of racing starting on Friday 22nd for Topper 5.3 and ILCA 4.

Eleven races are scheduled for the Optimist, ILCA 6, 420 and 29er classes. Eight races are scheduled for the ILCA 4 and Topper 5.3 classes.

One of the standout competitors travelling to Bangor is 18-year-old Eve McMahon, who is Afloat.ie Irish Sailor of the Year 2021. The Howth ILCA 6 sailor won the Gold Medal at the Laser Youth Worlds on Lake Garda in July last year.

The entry list stands currently at 57 and with the early bird entry closing in less than a week on 1st March, and the Optimist entry not yet open, it is expected that there will be many more entries.

Apart from the sailing, there will be speakers each evening giving inspiring and informative talks to the sailors, family, and friends. All young sailors are encouraged to attend these talks (within COVID guidelines), even if not competing.

This is a Clean Regattas event registered with Sailors for the Sea. The event has a set of environmental standards to follow throughout the event, to help reduce the impact on the environment and keep the sea a cleaner place to sail.

Ballyholme is lucky to have copious dinghy and car parking and is within walking distance of the town centre.

Eve McMahon of Howth Yacht Club, the Golden Girl of the international ILCA Classes, is Afloat.ie “Irish Sailor of the Year” for 2021, deservedly following an honoured track set over many years by Ireland’s legends in the sport.

Such elevation inevitably results in the top sailor seeming to function on a different level to the rest of us. And certainly, the 18-year-old’s international programme through 2021 was mind-boggling, made even more challenging by the frustrations of complying with pandemic regulations and restrictions in a situation made yet more demanding by the fact that some events were cancelled with relatively little notice, while others were put in place with only the briefest of run-in times.

Ten years hence, in looking back at her achievements through 2021, most of us will have long since forgotten that what looks like a smooth progression was at the time a potentially stressful process of constantly dealing with unexpected international travel and training problems. Problems of logistics and long delays and other hassle, problems where in times past a smooth travel transit was considered essential to approaching a major event in the right frame of mind.

The tension lifts at last…..new champion Eve McMahon (left) celebrates with team mate Ellie Cunnane on Lake Garda. Photo: Vasilij Zbogar

Yet throughout it all Eve stayed the course and faced the competition with such composure that even in the darkest hours, there might be flashes of gallant humour. And her already substantial fan-base was enlarged even further by the fact that she seems to enjoy her sailing more than ever.

She showed herself to be both a stellar sailor and yet still one of us - as freshly keen as any tyro club sailor - by turning out for the first post-Christmas major of the approaching new year, the DMYC Viking Marine Christmas Cracker race in Dun Laoghaire on December 27th. Needless to say, she won, her last victory in 2021 to round out an impressive litany of success. But the fact that she wanted some sports fun afloat in the depths of winter was what most impressed.

At its peak, 2021 was winning the Gold Medal at the Laser Youth Worlds on Lake Garda on July, which made her clearly our July “Sailor of the Month”. As European sailing learned to live with the pandemic, Lake Garda emerged as a central location where restriction-compliant events could be staged with a minimum of fuss.

Nevertheless its situation makes for an extra challenge for sailors from more distant locations like Ireland, for despite its international status, Garda is very much at the heart of Italian sailing. Thus the more astute visiting sailors quickly realize that they’re – how shall we say? - playing a double game, a game which becomes even more complex as the conclusion approaches, and very challenging indeed if you’re within sight of a Golden Medal against local competition.

When it all became official – winner Eve McMahon at centre with runner-up Anja Von Allmen of Switzerland and third-placed Sara Savelli of Italy.

Thus an amiable person such as Eve McMahon has to be one very street-smart sailor. Yet she realises that it is dogged application as much as sailing skills and strategic thinking at genius level which brings success, and with it there’s a demanding training programme into which she has somehow had to fit a continuing virtual series of courses with the Institute of Education in Dublin, in order to keep her life progress in contact with more mundane everyday realities.

While the Lake Garda Gold was the highlight of her 2021 season, there were many other international successes achieved to ensure that she is now the highest-ranked Irish female in the Star Sailors League, she has, of course, secured Sport Ireland Carding, and has been awarded a Paris 2024 Olympic Solidarity Scholarship from Sport Ireland.

So it’s onwards and upwards for Eve McMahon, sustained and supported in her efforts by one of Ireland's most remarkable sailing families. It’s highly likely that the best is yet to come. But for now, managing to achieve a sailing year of this standard through the pandemic problems of 2021 was truly exceptional, providing Ireland with an outstanding new Sailor of the Year.

Irish Sailor of the Year Award: Created in 1996 by Afloat, the awards represent all that is praiseworthy, innovative and groundbreaking in the Irish sailing scene. The national awards have recognised over 500 monthly award winners in the pages of Ireland's sailing magazine Afloat and these have been made to both amateur and professional sailors. 

From an entry list of 72 dinghies, a fleet of 45 answered the Race Officer’s call and presented themselves in the start area of the Christmas Cracker Race – sponsored by Viking Marine and hosted by the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club. This event had a very short gestation period, the idea only being floated on the penultimate Sunday of the pre-Christmas Frostbites. The idea was to have a charity race for the RNLI with entry fees capped at €5/boat and a request that competitors donate online to the RNLI.

In the week leading up to the event, the wind forecast varied enormously from the likelihood of no race due to high winds and gusts to a very light affair of fewer than three knots. Fortunately, neither of those scenarios arose and the fleet of 45 enjoyed winds that went up to a maximum of 15 knots, from the East. The air temperature was a balmy 10°.

Robin and Dacha Hilliard in their Flying Fifteen (3729) in the PY race Photo: Ian Cutliffe

The course was set as a “Tour of the Harbour” with marks in locations to make shoreside viewing easier. Thus, a mark was laid inside the end of the Carlisle Pier, in front of the National Yacht Club, another mark was set inside the fairway entrance to the marina towards the ice-house and the remaining two marks were set close to the Boyd Memorial on the East Pier and upwind of the western breakwater where it joins the West Pier.

Brian and Charlie O’Neil rounding Mark C (Boyd Memorial) Photo: Ian Cutliffe

The fleet was set a beat for the opening leg, to the mark off the Boyd Memorial, and they proceeded in an anti-clockwise direction around the harbour thereafter.

The plan was to have the first boat racing for 75 minutes and the Fireball of Frank Miller & Hermine O’Keeffe (14713), bisected the finish line 1.5 minutes inside that target.

Two Fireballs led the fleet all the way round. Miller was the first to fly spinnaker after rounding the weather mark and he was followed closely by Neil Colin & Marjo Moneen (14775). These were initially challenged on the water by the RS400 of Dave Sweeney and Gavin Doyle but as the race progressed the gap to the Fireballs increased. A strong ILCA turnout was led by Eve McMahon in the ILCA 6 (Radial), Gary O’Hare in the ILCA 7 (full-rig) and Max Cantwell in the ILCA 4 (4.7). Eve has had a great 2021 with a win in Lake Garda in the ILCA 6 Youth Worlds and she followed that up with a top 5 place in the Youth Worlds earlier this month. At the finish, she was only a couple of boat-lengths behind regular ILCA 7 competitor Gary O’Hare.

While the various ILCA rigs represented the largest element of the fleet, there was a good turnout from the Aeros, (5 and 7), the Fireballs, and there were two each of the GP14s and RS400s. The Irish National Sailing School has eight sailors on the water in the form of School Principal Kenneth Rumball, sailing an Aero 7 and seven RS Feva XLs sailed by the senior instructors. A solitary Flying Fifteen sailed by Robin Hilliard and daughter Dacha also contested the event and the Long household had two boats out – father Pierre, and one son in the IDRA and two other sons in the Mirror. We also had a Pico, sailed two-up.

DMYC Viking Marine Christmas Cracker – Top Ten finishers

1. Eve McMahon, Howth Yacht Club, ILCA 6 (Radial)
2. Max Cantwell, Royal St George Yacht Club, ILCA 4 (4.7)
3. Noel Butler, National Yacht Club, Aero 7
4. Brendan Foley, Royal St George Yacht Club, Aero 7
5. Gary O’Hare, Royal St George Yacht Club, ILCA 7 (full-rig)
6. Kenneth Rumball, Irish National Sailing Club, Aero 7
7. David Williams, Royal St George Yacht Club, ILCA 6
8. Mark Gavin, Royal St George Yacht Club, Aero 7
9. Roy van Mannen, Royal St George Yacht Club, Aero 5
10. Conrad Vandlik, Royal St George Yacht Club, ILCA 7.

Prize-winners will be contacted directly about getting their prizes, vouchers from Viking Marine.

The Christmas Cracker fleet under starter’s orders – 20 seconds to go.

Howth Yacht Club's Eve McMahon has finished in fourth place overall in the Women’s ILCA6 (Laser Radial) at the Youth Sailing World Championships in Mussanah, Oman.

A 3rd, 6th and 8th place in the final three races secured Eve’s top place in the fleet of 46.

The result rounds off a successful year of competition for the Dublin teenager, winning the 2021 ILCA6 (Laser Radial) Youth World Championships in Italy; U19 Silver Medallist, EURILCA (European region of International Laser Class Association) U21 European Championships; and Silver Medallist, EURILCA Laser Radial Youth Championships.

In the Men’s ILCA6 (Laser Radial), Cork sailors Jonathan O’Shaughnessy finished in 34th place, with Ben O’Shaughnessy and James Dwyer Matthews finishing in 12th place in the 29er class.

Her coach Vasilij Zbogar said “Eve finished 4th in tricky conditions – very light winds, choppy – she was struggling, and then the last two days we made a solid plan which she executed well. She’s had a fantastic year and still has another year of youth sailing competition left".