Displaying items by tag: Morten Espersen

15th November 2017

Casey Nominated for Top Coaching Award

#Rowing: Ireland coach Dominic Casey has been chosen as one of the finalists for the Coach of the Year at the World Rowing Awards for the second successive year. Casey coaches the Ireland lightweights, who had an extraordinary 2017.

The lightweight pair of Mark O’Donovan and Shane O’Driscoll capped a year of wins in the World Cup events and the European Championships with a World Championship gold. Paul O’Donovan also took top position on the podium in Florida after winning the lightweight single sculls. He and his brother Gary had taken two World Cup medals and a European Championship silver in the lightweight double. Denise Walsh was a World Championship finalist and took medals at the European Championships and the World Cup in Belgrade. The Ireland lightweight quadruple and the lightweight pair of David O’Malley and Shane Mulvaney took medals at the World Under-23 Championships.

Casey has also been nominated for an award for Distinguished Services to International Rowing. Former Ireland high performance director, Morten Espersen, is also a nominee for this award.

Published in Rowing

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Ireland Rowing HPD Espersen Resigns

#Rowing: The high performance director of Rowing Ireland, Morten Espersen, has resigned. Espersen emailed his decision to the chief executive of Rowing Ireland, Hamish Adams.

“On behalf of the entire Board and Staff I wish Morten well in the next phase of his professional and personal life and would like to personally thank him for his huge contribution to rowing in Ireland over the last four years,” Adams said.

“Morten will be working closely with us for the next three months to ensure our high performance programme continues to go from strength to strength.”

Published in Rowing

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Olympic Watersport Coaches Share Philips Award For August

Rory Fitzpatrick with his Philips Sports prize at the National Yacht Club

The Philips Sports Manager of the Month for August is being shared by the two succesful Olympic medal winning coaches – both in waterports – from Rio.

Irish Sailing Association Olympic coach Rory Fitzpatrick and Morten Espersen, the High Performance Director and Olympic Manager with Rowing Ireland are joint winners of the prestigious award for the month of August.

The award is an acknowledgement of the success of sailor Annalise Murphy and rowers Gary and Paul O’Donovan at the Olympic Games in Rio.

Annalise and the O'Donovan brothers brought home silver medals in the Laser Radial Sailing and Lightweight Double Sculls rowing categories respectively.

The sailing medal was the first since Moscow in 1980 and the O’Donovan brothers secured the first ever medal for Ireland in rowing.

Published in Olympic

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About the 29er Skiff Dinghy

The 29er is a one-design double-handed, single trapeze skiff for youth sailors.

There is an active class in Ireland, just one of the 38-countries from across all continents now racing the high-performance skiff.

The 29er is one of the latest dinghy classes to arrive in Ireland and has a 50/50 split between boys and girls.

The class like to describe the boat as "The most popular skiff for sailors who want to go fast!".

Derived from the Olympic class 49er class and designed by Julian Bethwaite the 29er was first produced in 1998.

Two sailors sail the 29er, one on trapeze.

The 6.25-metre high rig features a fractional asymmetrical spinnaker; a self-tacking jib decreases the workload of the crew, making manoeuvres more efficient and freeing the crew to take the mainsheet upwind and on two-sail reaches.

The 15.00 m2 spinnaker rigging set-up challenges crews to be fit and coordinated, and manoeuvres in the boat require athleticism due to its lack of inherent stability and the high speed with which the fully battened mainsail and jib power up.

The 74kg weight hull is constructed of fibreglass-reinforced polyester in a foam sandwich layout.

The fully battened mainsail and jib are made from a transparent Mylar laminate with orange or red Dacron trimming, while the spinnaker is manufactured from ripstop Nylon.

The mast is in three parts - an aluminium bottom and middle section, with a polyester-fibreglass composite tip to increase mast bend and decrease both overall weights, and the capsizing moment a heavy mast tip can generate. Foils are aluminium or fibreglass.

About the ILCA/Laser Dinghy

The ILCA, formerly known as the Laser, is the most produced boat in the world, with 220,000 units built since 1971.

It's easy to see why the single-handed dinghy has won the title of the most widely distributed boat of all time.

The Laser is a one-design dinghy, the hulls being identical but three rigs that can be used according to the size and weight of the sailor.

The class is international, with sailors from 120 countries. The boat has also been an Olympic class since 1996, being both the men's and women's singlehanded dinghy.

Three rigs are recognised by the International Laser Class Association (ILCA):

ILCA 4: sail of 4.70m2

ILCA 6: sail of 5.76 m2

ILCA 7: sail of 7.06 m2