SAILING: Invitations to Ireland's top class champions plus a range of wild card nominations have been issued this week ahead of the Allianz ISA Helmsman championship in two weeks.
Last weekend saw the junior version of the event at the Royal Cork YC in light airs as the season prepares to come to an end.
Settling into a new format that takes the event to a different venue every two years, the "championship of championships" arrives in Dún Laoghaire and the Royal St George YC, where the Dragon class has provided the fleet for the event.
Many of the nominees will have sailed in this three-person keelboat in the past but the defending champion sailed for the first time last week.
At last year's event on his home waters off Howth, Fergal Kinsella defied the odds by winning the event for the Irish Disabled Sailing Association for the first time. Declaring himself pleased with the Dragon, Kinsella will return from competing in the 2.4 metre class in Holland a week before his title defence.
Sydney 2000 paralympian John Twomey from Kinsale is a regular Dragon sailor, though his Sonar class campaign for Athens is a priority these days.
The former KYC Commodore is a wild card nomination as an elite athlete. Neil Hegarty is the Dragon-class nominee as helm on Phantom, the top Irish boat sailed with Peter Bowring and David Williams.
This trio won the Horgan Lynch South Coast Dragon Championships at Glandore last weekend, edging out 2001 National champion Andrew Craig on Chimaera for the second event running.
Meanwhile, up the coast at Crosshaven, Robert Espey topped the single-handed fleet at the Junior Helmsman event, while Bobby Collins won the double-handed event.
Newly-crowned 1720 class European champion Maurice "Prof" O'Connell could top this result at the Helmsman with a win to produce an annus mirabilis to mark his first full-time season, which has combined top class competition with coaching. He is in Medemblick with Twomey's crew for the Sonar World Championship next week.
Other contenders include Maria Coleman, world number two in the Europe Class and David Burrows, Sydney 2000 representative in the Finn single-hander and another potential competitor for Athens 2004, Tom Fitzpatrick, a three-time winner of the Helmsman championship and a prospect for Athens 2004 in the 49er.
Other wild card nominations for the championship include Gerald (Gerbil) Owens, the 2000 winner and prospect for Athens; Conor Clancy, third in the Laser II European championship; Anthony O'Leary, 1720 Scottish series winner, and Ciara Peelo, bronze medallist at the Laser Radial Worlds'.
The class nominations for the event are: Flying Fifteen, Justin Burke; Laser, Russell McGovern; GP14, Hugh Gill; Squib, Ruan Ó Tiarnaigh; Fireball, Louis Smythe;· Multihull, Neil Mangan; Shannon OD, David Dickson; 420, Stefan Hyde; Dragon, Neil Hegarty; Mermaid, Sam Shiels; Cruisers III, Brian O'Neill; J24, Barry O'Neill; Ruffian 23, Graham Miles; 1720 Maurice O'Connell; Wayfarer, Paul Killeen
