Eve McMahon took silver at the U21 ILCA Youth World Championships on Sunday 28 August 2022. This medal marks the best U21 world championship result for Ireland in the ILCA 6 class, which finished up in Vilamoura, Portugal after another day with no racing.
A total of seven races were completed over the week due to lack of wind. Eve also won the U19 category.
Already this summer the young Howth YC sailor achieved a hat-trick of gold medals winning the ILCA 6 Youth World Championships in Texas, the World Sailing Youth World Championships in the Netherlands and the ILCA6 Youth European Championships in Greece.
Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Rory Fitzpatrick, Irish Sailing Head Coach commented “Eve moved up a category for this Championship, so it was a tougher fleet with some older and more seasoned girls who have been to the Olympic Games.
And it was a challenging event; there were only seven races over the series and most of them were in very light, fickle sailing conditions. Eve had a couple of big setbacks early on when she had a race that she finished quite well, inside the top ten, that was then abandoned when she finished the race, and then she got two yellow flag penalties in race three. So any mistake after that point would have given her 81 points on top of her overall score and put her way down the fleet, so there was a lot of pressure on her not to make any mistakes.
She showed a lot of resistance, and really hustled. She sailed a good consistent strategy for the regatta and it took an outstanding performance from the Belgian girl to beat her. It's a bittersweet win for Eve, but she has another few years at this category to come back and get the gold !”.
The overall winner of the championship was Eline Verstraelen of Belgium.
Howth's Eve McMahon Takes Silver Medal at the U21 Laser Youth World Championships https://t.co/Qib0v8oCHL pic.twitter.com/Sck4Rx3Ite
— AfloatMagazine (@AfloatMagazine) August 28, 2022
