Rio Olympic Games Silver medallist Annalise Murphy will be in action for Team Ireland tomorrow in Gdansk in Poland.
She will be joined at the Laser European Championships by Aoife Hopkins and 16-year-old Eve McMahon in competition against 109 other sailors from 36 countries in the women’s Laser Radial fleet.
In the men’s Laser Standard, Finn Lynch, Liam Glynn and Ewan McMahon are racing in a field of 133 sailors from 39 countries.
This is the first opportunity since the World Championships in Melbourne last February for the Laser class to compete in a large scale-format.
All three of the 2016 Rio Olympic medallists will be competing in the Women’s Laser Radial. Annalise Murphy (Silver), will renew rivalry with Marit Bouwmeester of the Netherlands (Gold), and Anne Marie Rindom of Denmark (Bronze) after returning to the class.
The European Championships represent the last opportunity of 2020 to compete at the highest level of sailing. Once finished the team go into winter training in preparation for 2021 and all that it brings.
Irish Sailing attracted €246,000 in sponsorship and fundraising through the Irish Sailing Foundation during the last financial year. This was alongside overall funding of €1.3 million from Sport Ireland, €309,000 from Memberships, €284,000 from activities and €30,000 from different sources including grants from the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
Sailors themselves on high-performance teams also contributed a total of €54,062 to the sport.
