Irish Olympic Sailing Team on track for London 2012
Irish Olympic sailors were in Dublin today (14 June 2012) in advance of their final training camps for London 2012. The sailors are currently in a rest period following a very successful Sail for Gold regatta in Weymouth last week at which Gold & Bronze medals were achieved. This regatta was a very important training event for the sailors as it fielded all the international competitors for the Olympics and was held in the Olympic venue of Weymouth.
The team's achievements at the event were as follows:
- Peter O'Leary & David Burrows (Star) GOLD MEDAL
- Annalise Murphy (Radial) BRONZE MEDAL
- Ryan Seaton & Matt McGovern (49er) 7th
- Ger Owens & Scott Flanigan (470) 1st Silver Fleet
- James Espey (Laser) 4th Silver Fleet
- John Twomey, Ian Costello & Anthony Hegarty (Sonar) 12th place
Commenting on the team's preparations for the Games, ISA Performance Director James O'Callaghan stated 'the performance of the team last week shows that we are on track in our preparations for London 2012. Although it is a huge achievement to medal at this stage in preparations, all the worldclass sailors will be reviewing their performance and focusing on lessons learnt last week. The Olympics is a different event and the pressure is always high. The Irish sailors will continue to work to schedule and keep their minds focused however they will have a tough job in August '
One campaign that has a little more time to prepare is the Paralympic Sonar team of John Twomey, Ian Costello and Anthony Hegarty. Their event does not start until 01 September so they have most of the season to fine tune their techniques. The Sonar campaign trains out of Kinsale and after a busy early sailing season in Miami, Holland and Weymouth, their training camp will be based in Kinsale which offers similar sailing conditions to Weymouth.
For the next 6 weeks the Star and Radial campaigns will be training out of Weymouth and the remainder of the campaigns will train mostly in Ireland with regular visits to the Olympic venue.
It is important at this stage of preparations to concentrate on fitness and wellbeing. All team members are back in the gym to increase their core strength combined with cardio vascular activity for overall fitness.
ISA Performance Director James O'Callaghan added 'The results that Irish sailing is getting across all classes demonstrates that we have good systems and structures in place. This foundation would not have been possible to build without the programme support from the Irish Sports Council and now with Providence Resources coming on board we are able to enhance the programme further.'