NI Sailing Team dominate Celtic Cup with clean sweep victory

Daniel Palmer - Celtic Cup © RYA Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland sailing team triumphed in the Celtic Cup, following a tight weekend of racing held at Killyleagh Outdoor Education Centre.

The event is a nations sailing trophy between Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and each nation puts forward their six best Topper and ILCA 6 sailors to compete against each other.

Although the overall points difference between Northern Ireland and their Scottish and Welsh counterparts was very small, the weekend finished with a Northern Irish clean sweep after team victories in the Topper and ILCA 6 class.

Celtic Cup - photo © RYA Northern Ireland

RYA Northern Ireland Performance Manager, Andrew Baker, said: "A clean sweep is fantastic but I don't think the scores reflect just how close the racing really was. The other nations and were definitely pushing hard and it's fantastic to see.

"They say you earn the medals in the winter and you gain them in summer. It's not what you do this weekend but it's all the training sessions we've been doing previously.

"It was pretty windy and hard work this morning. I think at times they had only 30 seconds rest between races so everyone looked pretty gassed! You could clearly see in the results those sailors who had put the effort in with their fitness because talent only gets you so far.

"For a lot of these guys, they're going to go to the ILCA Europeans or Topper Worlds and it's very easy to get stuck in your nation or little group. This event spreads that out and just makes life so much easier."

Conditions all weekend were challenging. Too much wind on Saturday meant that racing was abandoned for the day and sailors had mixed conditions on day two ranging between eight and sixteen knots.

Welsh ILCA 6 sailor, Flo Tovey said: "It was 'snakes and ladders' racing out there really, especially with the tide, waves and pressure coming from all over. It was quite hard to pick out your priorities for the upwinds, but I think I managed to do that pretty well in some of the races.

"I've been training with the Welsh Squad and GB Youth Squad so it's nice to get some racing in with the other nations. I was training out in Valencia recently with some of the Irish and Scottish ILCA sailors so it's nice to come together for some racing with your friends."

With such high-quality opposition, this is a great achievement for those sailors and coaches involved. This included:

Topper Team

• Adam Green
• Zoe Westhurst
• Ben McCaldin
• Alex Eadie
• Polly Robinson
• James Eadie
• Leo Westhurst

ILCA 6 Team

• Daniel Palmer
• Bobby Driscoll
• Cormac Byrne
• Autumn Haliday
• Freddie Doig

On top of the overall team win, there were some great individual performances across the five races sailed. Adam Green placed 3rd in the Topper class and Daniel Palmer and Bobby Driscoll placed 1st and 2nd respectively in the ILCA 6 class.

Full results here