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MG Motor Ireland announces its sponsorship of the Sailing Club of the Year title for 2022. This year, joint winners Lough Ree Yacht Club and The Shannon One Design Association have claimed this prestigious title. MG Motor is an innovative brand, providing electric for all while Sailing is a progressive and inclusive sport, resulting in a strong partnership. MG Motor Ireland is proud to have a great affinity with Sailing. We can see from the variety of winners over the years that the Sailing Club of the Year award plays an important role in highlighting and acknowledging Ireland’s successful sailing clubs.
The Sailing Club of the Year award has been running since 1979, and MG Motor Ireland is delighted to take on this Sponsorship, with immediate effect. MG Motor strives to provide electric for all and has a range of electric and Plug-In Hybrid vehicles to suit a variety of requirements. MG Motor has recently launched the new MG ZS EV, a fully electric vehicle with an impressive range of up to 440KM. MG Motor is going from strength to strength and will continue to do so with its new affiliation with Sailing.
The remarkable diversity of the sailing clubs of Ireland is reflected in the many factors which are taken into consideration in assessing the winners, and back in 1990, the special nature of the Irish sailing scene was further acknowledged by including One-Design Class Associations in the overall eligibility list.
This has enabled added depth to be added to the 2022 awards, as Lough Ree Yacht Club was restricted in celebrating its 250th Anniversary in 2020 because of pandemic restrictions, yet the club set an example under Commodores Garret Leech and his current successor John McGonigle in complying with the regulations while still having meaningful sailing.
That included providing carefully-regulated yet still very competitive racing for the popular and decidedly special Shannon One Designs, which in 2022 - under the Chairmanship of Philip Mayne - are celebrating their class Centenary, the first race having taken place in August 1922 with Lough Ree YC.
Despite the pandemic, sailing in Ireland continued as much as possible, and in 2020 the holder of what is now the MG Motor “Sailing Club of the Year” title was the Royal Cork YC in its Tricentenary Year, making it – at six times winning - the most frequent title holder of all.
Then in 2021 Dublin Bay SC had been exemplary under Commodore Jonathan Nicholson and Ann Kirwan to become “Club of the Year”, with every major trophy (and it has dozens of them) properly competed for despite socially-distanced circumstances, such that their success was an encouraging example for the whole country.
Thus the Afloat.ie MG Motor “Sailing Club of the Year” award emerges from the pandemic stronger than ever, its role paramount in highlighting the best of Ireland’s many, varied and successful sailing clubs in a strong and time-honoured tradition with a new eco-friendly foundation.Text here ...