SAILING: Ireland's Maria Coleman ended the Europe World Championship at Hamilton, Canada, on Wednesday in seventh overall. Having earlier held fourth place, her slip down the leading pack came as Finland's Sari Multala, the world number one stormed up the fleet on the final day with a second and first place.
The Baltimore Sailing Club single-hander has held her own world number two ranking since the latest ISAF list that was issued last week. Her worst standing has been fourth since 2001 but breaking into the top five results on a regular basis has proved elusive so far.
The recent Star class world championship was sailed at Los Angeles and triple Irish Olympic veteran Mark Mansfield with Killian Collins competed in a field of 104 boats from 28 countries. Competitors included numerous household names such as Paul Cayard, Mark Reynolds, Iain Percy and Freddie Loof. Mansfield retains his number three world ranking, according to the latest ISAF list.
"We had results of 2-13-18-25-7 and one retiral," Mansfield told The Irish Times.
"We were lying in fifth or sixth place for most of the week but the retiral on the last day dropped us down a bit. This eighth place follows an 11th in last year's worlds and a third (with David O'Brien) in the previous year's event. Very few in the class have this consistency in the Worlds."
Mansfield and Collins' new Folli-built boat is proving very fast and the pair moved to LA after a second overall place in Kiel week in June. The Cork pair are ranked number three in the World, Ireland's second highest with Maria Coleman in the Europe ranked second.
After a morale boosting victory in the world championship pre-event competition, the King of Spain trophy, the second pair of Athens 2004 hopefuls, Max Tracey and Anthony Shanks finished in 36th place overall. Conditions were light to moderate throughout the event.
In other news this week, organisers of the biennial Ford Cork Week at the Royal Cork Yacht Club announced significant results following a fresh format that saw a deliberate limit placed on the entry size. Event chairman James McGrath announced that the event had injected an estimated €10 million into the local economy.
And in stark contrast to the massive 2000 edition of Cork Week, the event was also able to generate a surplus of more than €500,000. Just 18 months ago, the RCYC was facing a crisis when the event failed to generate funds for the club and the world's oldest yacht club was facing a loss for the year of £250,000.
John O'Driscoll from Lough Derg Yacht Club with crew Johnny Swan from Howth emerged as Irish Enterprise National Champions following a seven race series at Sligo YC last weekend.
