Irish Sailing offers clear pathways for smaller nations

A second event qualification for the Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing competition in Marseille next year has neatly rounded off a strong season for Ireland.

It is another marker on a journey spanning almost two decades that now sees ‘IRL’ regularly featuring in medal race finals and amongst the medal-winners at major events around the world.

At the centre of that steady transformation of prospects is Irish Sailing’s James O’Callaghan, who is the country’s longest serving Performance Director since starting in the role in 2006.

A Business & Economics graduate of Trinity College Dublin, O’Callaghan has shared his insights into how a small nation can mount a comprehensive programme that not only energises the sport domestically but delivers world class results as well.

The obvious high-point was the Olympic silver medal won by Annalise Murphy in 2016 in the women’s single-handed event but O’Callaghan says that this wasn’t an isolated success, the footprints were in the build-up to it with success at youth and development level.

Murphy won the under-21 worlds in 2009 in the Laser Radial class (ILCA 6) a result just recently replicated by Ireland’s Eve McMahon who has her sights set on Paris.

“We’ve had our low points as well but it’s fair to say that we’re on ‘an up’ at the moment and in many ways, there are parallels to London (2012),” O’Callaghan says.

By small nation standards, Murphy’s result was significant but just how difficult is it when compared to the multiple successes of the bigger nation?

“I’m not sure that it’s even fair to compare,” counters O’Callaghan. “There are ten Olympic Sailing disciplines and as a small nation we’ve decided to focus on four – the 49er, 49erFX and ILCA 6 and ILCA 7.

“That (choice) is dictated by one, our resource restriction, and two, by our population restriction. But by focussing our resource it means that we can be competitive in those disciplines. That’s where the comparison begins and ends.”

“Channelling the talent into four disciplines makes a lot of sense because you’re able to build-up competition within your own country which is always the challenge for a small nation as you don’t have the number of boats to have a competitive process domestically.”

That task is still a work in progress and Irish Sailing has an ambition to have more people involved at senior team level. However, the main result of that policy is an improvement in results – generally most of the Irish senior teams are delivering results at medal race level or are in contention for the podium.

“It’s important to outline your strategy, identify where you can compete,” suggests O’Callaghan.

“The classes we chose suited us as we had a domestic ILCA fleet already and a strong track record in the skiffs though that might be different for other small countries.”

Alternatives for other federations might be in other classes but O’Callaghan believes the key is to identify where to carve out a competitive niche.

“If you try to be all things to all people with a small pool of sailors, you’ll divide the talent and that can reduce the competitive process domestically,” he cautions.

“Any sporting pathway needs finance, unquestionably and we would not be in the position we’re in without the funding we receive from government through Sport Ireland.”

Meanwhile, the past two years of strong results at youth and development levels have resulted in considerable demand for access to Irish Sailing’s programmes.

“We’re back to a position where we’ve got young, ambitious sailors putting their hands up to say ‘we’d like to do an Olympic campaign’ and its incumbent on us to support that through resource like more coaches for that development level.”

Photos: David Branigan/Oceansport