Displaying items by tag: Her Sport

24th December 2023

Sailing and Rowing Stars Among Nominees for 2023 Her Sport Awards

Annalise Murphy and Eve McMahon are among the nominees in this year’s Her Sport Awards.

After yet another historic and momentous year for Irish sportswomen, the Her Sport Awards aim to celebrate and recognise the incredible achievements of Irish athletes in 2023.

The awards ceremony will take place at UCD’s Astra Hall on Saturday 27 January and voting is open now on in the various categories, including Personality of the Year where the shortlist includes Olympic hero and National Yacht Club stalwart Annalise Murphy.

After calling time on her Olympic career last year, Murphy has had a busy 2023, both as part of the Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI) Athletes’ Commission and in the velodrome, making headlines in track cycling.

Murphy’s silver medal in Rio 2016 was in the Laser Radial, now the ILCA 6 — the boat of choice for Eve McMahon, a nominee for Young Athlete of the Year.

It’s the latest in a slew of accolades for the Howth Yacht Club talent, who is the current U21 World Champion in her class, is also shortlisted for the RTÉ Young Sportsperson of the Year — and was named as Afloat.ie’s Sailor of the Month for October.

Irish rowing double Alison Bergin and Zoe Hyde are also in the running for the Team of the Year gong as their Paris 2024 qualifying campaign made great progress.

Show your support by casting your vote at awards.hersport.ie.

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The Kingstown to Queenstown Yacht Race or 'K2Q', previously the Fastnet 450

The Organising Authority ("OA") are ISORA & SCORA in association with The National Yacht Club & The Royal Cork Yacht Club.

The Kingstown to Queenstown Race (K2Q Race) is a 260-mile offshore race that will start in Dun Laoghaire (formerly Kingstown), around the famous Fastnet Rock and finish in Cork Harbour at Cobh (formerly Queenstown).

The K2Q race follows from the successful inaugural 'Fastnet 450 Race' that ran in 2020 when Ireland was in the middle of the COVID Pandemic. It was run by the National Yacht Club, and the Royal cork Yacht Club were both celebrating significant anniversaries. The clubs combined forces to mark the 150th anniversary of the National Yacht Club and the 300th (Tricentenary) of the Royal Cork Yacht Club.

Of course, this race has some deeper roots. In 1860 the first-ever ocean yacht race on Irish Waters was held from Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) to Queenstown (now Cobh).

It is reported that the winner of the race was paid a prize of £15 at the time, and all competing boats got a bursary of 10/6 each. The first race winner was a Schooner Kingfisher owned by Cooper Penrose Esq. The race was held on July 14th 1860, and had sixteen boats racing.

In 2022, the winning boat will be awarded the first prize of a cheque for €15 mounted and framed and a Trophy provided by the Royal Cork Yacht Club, the oldest yacht club in the world.

The 2022 race will differ from the original course because it will be via the Fastnet Rock, so it is a c. 260m race, a race distance approved by the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club as an AZAB qualifier.

A link to an Afloat article written by WM Nixon for some history on this original race is here.

The aim is to develop the race similarly to the Dun Laoghaire–Dingle Race that runs in alternate years.

Fastnet 450 in 2020

The South Coast of Ireland Racing Association, in association with the National Yacht Club on Dublin Bay and the Royal Cork Yacht Club in Cork, staged the first edition of this race from Dun Laoghaire to Cork Harbour via the Fastnet Rock on August 22nd 2020.

The IRC race started in Dun Laoghaire on Saturday, August 22nd 2020. It passed the Muglin, Tuscar, Conningbeg and Fastnet Lighthouses to Starboard before returning to Cork Harbour and passing the Cork Buoy to Port, finishing when Roches's Point bears due East. The course was specifically designed to be of sufficient length to qualify skippers and crew for the RORC Fastnet Race 2021.