Irish Team launched for Student Yachting World Cup

Annalise Murphy with the Irish Student Yachting World Cup Team © Joe St Leger

Irish sailing heroine Annalise Murphy was in Dun Laoghaire today supporting 10 of her fellow UCD students as they launched the team that will represent Ireland at the 2012 Student Yachting World Cup. The prestigious event which began in 1979 will be held in La Rochelle, France from the 27th of October to the 3rd of November. The annual regatta attracts the top student sailors from around the world including Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK and the USA. The UCD students earned the right to represent Ireland having won the Irish Student Yachting National Championships in Dun Laoghaire in March.

Annalise first attended UCD four years ago but subsequently put her degree on hold for three years to focus on her Olympic campaign. She has returned to UCD this week and was delighted to attend the launch and offer her university peers some words of encouragement. Annalise remarked “I’m great friends with the guys on the team from either sailing or my first year in UCD. They’re a really strong team and have a really good chance of winning at the World Cup. I wish them the best of luck“.

The highly experienced team will not just be representing UCD but all corners of the island of Ireland. The 10 sailors hail from all over the country including Antrim, Cork, Down, Mayo, Sligo, Wexford and Waterford and between them share a wealth of skills and knowledge. The team’s skipper Aidan McLaverty competed at the event last year when he and the team from Cork Institute of Technology took home the bronze. The Health and Performance graduate also trained on the Irish Sailing Association’s Academy with Annalise Murphy and has won silver and bronze at world championships. The tactician for the team, Barry McCartin holds nine Irish National Sailing Championship titles across six different classes and has also competed internationally on the Olympic 470 class circuit.

Team Captain Cathal Leigh Doyle, a UCD Business and Law graduate and Bowman David Fitzgerald have won numerous Irish national titles between them whilst medical students Simon Doran and Theo Murphy spent years competing in the Laser Radial class at international level. Ben Fusco has 9,000 miles of offshore experience and in 2009 won the Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race with a record setting time. He also skippered the youngest team ever to sail around Ireland non-stop in 2010. The three girls on the team also have both national and international experience in spades. Isabella Morehead and Alyson Rumball both began sailing in Optimists from a very young age and quickly progressed to international regattas in Optimists, Fevas, 420s and 29ers. While Ellen Cahill has spent the past 18 months in California studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of California San Diego where she partook in both Team Racing and yacht racing,

This incredibly talented team know that experience isn’t enough, they must train as much as possible over the next six week if they are to effectively challenge the reigning champions from Euromed Arthur Loyd in France. Utilising the UCD High Performance Gym, the team will be working on their strength and conditioning a minimum of two days per week with the gym’s trainers. They will also spend every weekend, and evenings during the week on an ad hoc basis, on board their training yacht ‘Adrenaline’. Under the instruction of coaches Nicholas O’Leary, brother of Olympian Peter O’Leary and past Student Yachting World Cup competitors John Downey and Marty O’Leary, the team hope to ensure their best chances of bringing home the gold to Ireland, something which has not been repeated since 2008.