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#Rowing: John Armstrong, who has been coaching the Ireland pararowing team, has been chosen as the new Northern Ireland Talent Development coach. Armstrong’s decorated career as a rower included a bronze medal at the World Championships in 1997 and gold and silver in World Cup regattas in 1999, all in a lightweight quadruple scull. He won eight Irish Championships as a lightweight single sculler and four as a senior single sculler. His son, Jason Armstrong, was part of the Queen’s University novice coxed four which won a dramatic final at the Irish Championships last month.

The announcement of his appointment said: Rowing Ireland is delighted to announce the appointment of John Armstrong as Northern Ireland Talent Development Coach.  John will be responsible for the co-ordination and development of the Northern Ireland Rowing Talent Development programme. This will encompass the co-ordination and delivery of coaching to athletes identified as having the potential to achieve ‘podium’ success. He will have lead responsibility for all matters pertaining to the successful delivery of the Talent Development programme, which will necessitate effective partnership working with a variety of partners that will include: clubs, schools, individual athletes, coaches, service providers, parents and/or guardians.

John will take up the position on September 2nd 2013.  We wish him every succcess in his new role.

Published in Rowing

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.