Laser Radial European Championships - Bronze for Alison Young

by RYA on 8 Sep 2013 At the Laser Radial European Championships in Dun Laoghaire, Alison Young continued her season’s form with a bronze medal. It was the first European Championship silverware for the Bewdley sailor, who finished fifth at her Olympic Games debut last year at Weymouth and Portland, and comes after a string of World Cup and EUROSAF circuit podium finishes which have kick-started her road to Rio 2016 in the women’s single-handed class.

Young notched up an impressive scoreline across the 12 race series in Dublin Bay, counting nine of them inside the top five – but it wasn’t enough to reel in the host’s Annalise Murphy, who secured a dominant victory on her home waters to take the European crown by 22 points over Dutch Olympic silver medallist Marit Bouwmeester.

For Young though, her Europeans bronze was a good milestone in her quest for the podium in three years’ time.

'I’ve never won a Europeans medals before so for me this is a great confidence boost, and it’s great that the work we’ve been doing this season is continuing to pay off.

'It’s good build up for the World Championships in China next month.'

The 27-year-old continued: 'Annalise had a cracking week – obviously a good bit of local knowledge there – so really well done to her for her title. The usual suspects were fighting it out at the top of the fleet so we had some great racing this week.

'It was pretty shifty every day, which definitely made it a tricky event but also meant there were lots of opportunities to keep coming back during the races. Today the wind was coming out of the north which it hadn’t been all week, so that kept things interesting for the final day.'

Young’s training partner Hannah Snellgrove finished 10th overall (Ninth European) with Chloe Martin 23rd (20th European).

In the Laser Standard fleet, there was disappointment for Nick Thompson with started the day in pole position but finished fifth overall (Fourth European) in an incredibly tight finish.

After 12 races the 27-year-old Exeter-based sailor ended up just five points from the gold medal position, which went to Croatia’s Tonci Stipanovic for the third time.

Britain’s Podium Potential sailors Alex Mills Barton and Martin Evans secured impressive finishes, in 13th and 14th overall (9th and 11th Europeans).

For full regatta results and information visit Laser Europeans British Sailing RYA website