SAILING HIGH PERFORMANCE GRANTS:FOLLOWING THE announcement by the Irish Sports Council of High-Performance grants for 2009, the Irish Sailing Olympic Group is to begin rolling out its revised programme following last summer's Beijing Games. A total of 36 sailors from junior to world class will also receive grant assistance towards their programmes.
The amount allocated to the ISA’s programme is marginally lower than 2008 but at €450,000 it has been warmly welcomed by the ISA performance director James O’Callaghan who said: “It is great to get this continued support from the ISC. It is confirmation that the Sport Council are happy with our programme and the results we are delivering.”
In addition, the 36 sailors are to receive direct funding for 2009 campaigns under the ISC carding scheme totalling €186,000, though the irony of Max Treacy and Anthony Shanks topping this list with €20,000 apiece for attaining the world standard, qualifying Ireland for a place in the Olympic Star class competition in 2008, will hardly go unnoticed.
The pair wasn’t selected for the Qingdao regatta, while Peter O’Leary and Stephen Milne were chosen for the sole Irish place in the class at the games.
Meanwhile, O’Leary and Finn class Olympian Tim Goodbody have since joined forces to campaign in the Star for London 2012 and €12,000 each for achieving the international grade under the carding scheme will go towards this year’s costs. The pair were sixth in the 66-boat Bacardi Cup in Miami yesterday afternoon.
The significant level of support directed to Irish sailing by the Government was clearly evident at last weekend’s ISA agm at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin. The annual accounts for 2008 show that over €950,000 in grants were provided to the association.
By comparison, membership subscriptions from individuals and the Joint Membership Scheme as well as affiliated groups came to €308,500, representing the 10-month income from 25,663 members. The association also earned €338,000 from non high-performance related activities such as training and conferences.
Nevertheless, most of the Irish Sports Council’s funding is “ring-fenced” solely towards the high-performance programmes and ultimately aimed at securing Olympic success.
According to O’Callaghan, building on the recent successes in the Junior Academy programme is critical to achieving longer-term results and the measure of performance at Olympic level continues to be top 10 by discipline.
So as far as names coming down the track for London 2012, watch out for: first under-17 Laser 4.7 World Championship (Philip Doran); fourth female Laser Radial European Championship (Annalise Murphy); fifth female Laser Radial World Championship (Annalise Murphy); 10th Laser Radial European Championship (Oliver Loughead).
