This week’s announcement of a title sponsor for the Irish Sailing Association’s high-performance squad won’t quite put the sailors on a par with the glamour of bigger continental teams, but it’s a change up in gear towards full-time professionalism.
Providence Resources has committed to a four-year plan, building on their introductory support this time last year in the lead-up to London 2012.
The support will be in addition to Irish Sports Council funding, which was described this week as the "platform that has been essential for delivering the results in Weymouth last year".
Securing the additional finance at this stage in the Olympic cycle, three years away from the Rio de Janeiro Games, means continuity of investment and multi-annual budget planning, according to James O’Callaghan, ISA Performance Director.
"Aside from the money, it's also a confidence boost (for the sailors) to feel part of something significant," he told The Irish Times yesterday.
However, he stressed that the funding would not be used for salary or performance bonuses that are a hallmark of other squads that regularly featured in the medal tables.
“We’re still a young programme compared to Team GBR or Sweden. I’d like to eventually see full-time professional sailors but success is a big part of that so that’s a marker for the guys involved,” he said. “It’s pretty clear for them what they need to achieve.”
O’Callaghan points to the irony of Team GBR losing Skandia as their long-term title sponsor so will be known as just the British Sailing Team.
Providence Team IRL will have solely performance targets in mind for the additional resources which O’Callaghan outlined.
Chief amongst these is getting to grips with the conditions at Rio which are expected to be starkly different to Weymouth.
Weymouth was also different to other Olympic venues in that it was virtually on Ireland’s doorstep and convenient for teams to establish themselves there for training camps and local familiarisation. The Brazilian city won’t be such an easy prospect.
“One of the reasons for our success in Weymouth was the amount of time we spent there,” said O’Callaghan. “There’s more cost and distance involved in Rio but’s that just what we have to do.”
So a base will be set-up there for regular visits beginning next week with Annalise Murphy and her coach Rory Fitzpatrick. The new funding will also enable an increase in the number of coaching days the crews can avail of annually.
A new initiative will be on the research side of the high-performance department which has accumulated various data over recent years but has been unable to analyse properly.
A key project will be to look at the performance pathway and how younger sailors fare on their route towards Olympic level. Other research may include tide and weather expert studies.
