2024 Irish Sailing Youth Nationals 

2024 Irish Sailing Youth Nationals

The anticipation had been building for weeks and as group of 39 of the countries more experienced Optimist sailors headed for the Royal Cork Yacht Club in Crosshaven this week they were giddy at the prospect of four days of racing at Irish Sailings premier youth event.
Unfortuantely, storm Kathleen had other ideas and curtailed racing to just one day. However, under experieced guidance of RO Ciaran McSweeney four competive races were run in a mix of conditions securing a series . Thereafter there was an anxious wait to see if any more racing could be had but utimately the difficult decision was made to cancel the remainder of the event when it became clear that there was no reasonable prospect of racing.

If you look at the photos from the event, the real interest for most of the sailors that were there was to see their friends and to catch up with friends they would have raced against only months ago, who have now progressed to other pathway classes such as Lasers and Toppers.

The Youth Nationals is also used to select our sailors for international competition and this year the IODAI/Irish Sailing Teams were for the Optimist Europeans, European Two Team and a development team to attend the French International Championships. The process used to select the teams follows the Irish Sailing Youth Nationals and IODAI Selection Policy.

Congratulations to all the sailors that competed in the event and to those that secured a position on one of the IODAI International Teams.

The Euro 2 Team will be used this year as per the selection policy due to the IODA World Championships being held in South America.

The following sailors accepted places on Teams;

EUROPEAN TEAM

EURO 2 TEAM

IRISH DEVELOPMENT TEAM

Max O’Hare, RSGYC, Patrick Fegan, RSGYC / MYC and Maeve and Lily Donagh both of RSGYC / LDYC qualified for the European Team but elected not to take up their places.

The 2024 teams will now start training in earnest to compete at the various events. The Europeans and Euro2 Team are coached by Søren M. Laugesen and the International Development Team are coached by Dara O’Shea. 

• The Europeans Team will compete at the IODA European Championships in Carrara, Italy from the 26^th June to 6^th of July. Yvonne Durcan will travel with the sailors and support as our Team Lead.
• The Euro2 Team will compete at the Optimist Gold Cup in Monfalcone, Italy. 9^th to 16^th of July. 
• The International Development Team will compete at Coupe Internationale d’été Optimist in Biscarosse, France. 13^th to the 19^th of July.

IODAI wishes all the competitors well and extends our thanks to Irish Sailing, Royal Cork Yacht Club, the huge team of coaches and volunteers who have trained the sailors and of course the parents and all the competitors.

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