SAILING 2012 YOUTH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS AND VOLVO OCEAN RACE: AS DÚN Laoghaire celebrates its winning bid to stage the Youth World Championships in 2012, the challenge for Ireland is to field a competitive team.
Ireland won medals in 1996 when Laura Dillon and Ciara Peelo took bronze, but since then, despite some fine individual performances, Ireland teams have struggled to make the top 10.
Ireland's only top-10 finisher at the 2007 event in Denmark was Carlow's Ben Lynch in the boys single-handed Laser class.
Dublin Bay will be the race track for over 300 sailors from 60 nations after the Government lent its support to the Irish bid at the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) conference in Madrid earlier this month.
Confirmation of the €750,000 event, scheduled for July 2012, establishes the capital's waters as an international course, though the venue has proved fickle in recent times. And it could yet host other world ISAF events, a marvellous prospect for an Irish port.
The bid has been won by the Royal St George Yacht Club. Flag officer Brian Craig, who staged the Dragon worlds at the same venue in 2007, will chair the organising committee.
The scale of the event dictates that their nearest neighbour, the National Yacht Club, will be co-hosts.
A strong supporter of the Youth Championships, Ireland has missed only one in the last 20 years, and had been the only participating country that hasn't hosted the event.
Racing will be in four dinghy classes - Lasers, 420s, 29ers and multihulls - while windsurfing is also included. Up to 300 volunteers will be required.
With four years to prepare, the hope is Irish juniors will participate in qualification programmes in the run-up to the event, dubbed the "Youth Olympic regatta". Competitors must be under 19 years in 2012.
"Our main objective is to get an Irish sailor on the podium in Dún Laoghaire," Craig said yesterday.
Securing the event is one thing, identifying young Irish talent capable of such an achievement is another. Craig's thinking is that if Irish success can be produced on the bay in 2012, then it will be a solid stepping stone for the Olympics in 2016.
Tomorrow, in Athlone, the Irish Cruiser Racer Association (ICRA) will announce its boat of the year, a high point of the national conference. Shortlisted are Dave Dwyer's Mariner's Cove after wins in the Scottish series and the ICRA Nationals in Howth. Also in the running is Roy Dickson's Rosie. Offshore exponent Aodhán Fitzgerald's Ireland West, the winner of the BMW Round Ireland race, is also mentioned.
Proceedings kick off at 10.15am in the Sheraton hotel, where Bill Gladstone will deliver two sessions on race trim and tactics in the Volvo Ocean Race.
Green Dragon through worst of The Doldrums
WHAT IS turning into a repeat performance of leg one, the Green Dragon - but now without its main boom- is again proving adept at handling the Doldrums, and the team have made a swift passage in this second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, reports David O'Brien.
Last night skipper Ian Walker had just slipped slightly to fourth place, having cleared the worst of the fickle winds. They spent the afternoon in a drag race with Telefónica Blue, skippered by Dutchman Bouwe Bekking, out on the western flank of the course.
Ger O'Rourke's Delta Lloyd lies fifth.
Ericsson 4 continues to lead the fleet with under 600 miles to the finish in Cochi, India, where organisers are assessing the terrorist risk to the fleet in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
