SAILING / Star World Championships: The fortunes of Ireland's sailing team on the Mediterranean took a nose dive when Max Treacy and Anthony Shanks were dismasted yesterday having held fourth overall for four days at the Star World Championships in Italy.
To the west, in France, only one of the team made the gold fleet competing at the Hyeres Regatta, which last night looked set to be cut to eight races as winds reached 40-knots.
Lack of racing at the Audi Star Class World Championship in Gaetta meant that Irish crews, who performed well in the only two races sailed by Wednesday, stayed at the top of the scoreboard for four days. Treacy and Shanks, with 11 points, were fourth overall with Cork rivals Mark Mansfield and Killian Collins fifth on 18 points. But all that changed when racing resumed yesterday afternoon.
Treacy and Shanks dropped to 33rd, following the mast breakage, reported to have collapsed at the hounds, in what is the third leg of a three-way trial for Athens selection.
Although they trailed Mansfield and Collins by 150 points in the standings, a gutsy opening performance by the Dubliners breathed new life into a selection trial that now looks a mathematical certainty for Mansfield and Collins who lie 13th overall.
Meanwhile, France's ISAF grade one event racing was cancelled yesterday due to a 40-knots mistral that looks certain to threaten the remaining four races in a scheduled 12-race series.
Europe singlehander Maria Coleman lies 35th in a fleet of 90 boats, just in the gold fleet, with Dun Laoghaire 470 crew Gerbil Owens and Ross Killian only making the silver fleet, sailing an old boat in an attempt to preserve their kit for Athens. They will head next week's world championships in Croatia where they will sail in their Olympic boat.
Also racing are three Irish Laser sailors, Roger Craig and Gavin Jones, who are in the Silver fleet, and Rory Fitzpatrick, who will be more than disappointed to be racing in the Emerald division. Aaron O'Grady is competing in the Finn class.
At home, Noel Butler, the 2003 Laser 2 World Champion, gave a talk in Galway Bay Sailing Club clubhouse last night about his progress from beginner to world champion and also spoke about sailing funding in Ireland.
The helmsman, who was voted the Cork Dry Gin sailor of 2003, is concerned at the lack of support for non-Olympic sailing disciplines, which he says deserve far better.
He criticised current funding structures that go almost entirely to Olympic sailors and urged the national governing body, the Irish Sailing Association, to support it's amateur grass roots membership, the bulk of which sail non-Olympic boats.
"Sometime someone has to recognise that there are other elite aspects to sailing other than the Olympics. For instance the world record broken by two Irish sailors on board Cheyenne last month." he said yesterday.
Butler also singled out dinghy helmsman Shane McCarthy as meritorious of funding, the Greystones sailor has produced Irish, UK and Swiss Fireball titles as well as finishing third in that class' European championships without any direct support.
The evening was opened by the President of National University of Ireland, Galway, and marked the start of a fund-raising drive to purchase a fleet of Firefly dinghies for a club that has nearly 200 members, 20 instructors, two racing teams but no boats.
