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13 Sept 2025
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13 Sept 2025
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The Ireland Team: Marcus Ryan (third from left) and Louis Molloy (right) and their team in Plymouth at the World Championship
Two Mayo men have helped the Ireland team to win a historic first gold medal in at the World Championship in Plymouth, England.
Louis Molloy and Marcus Ryan from Westport sailed to a famous victory over the last few days in the J24 Class. From race one their boat 'Headcase' was up there with the top boats.
And in the final race, they stormed to the win in very challenging conditions.
The other members of the crew are Ryan Glynne, from Ballyholme Yacht Club, Cillian Dickson from Lough Ree, and Sam O'Byrne from Howth.
The winner's selfie right after the final race today.
Mayo Sailing Club Commodore Pat Aylward was full of praise: "Amazing achievement from a group of guys. Five years hard work paid off. Our club is very proud of its two crew members Louis and Marcus. They're a great example to our young up and coming Mayo sailors."
Only in July, the 'Headcase' team secured a third European Championship in-a-row in the Netherlands.
It had been a steady progression for the Irish team, as Marcus Ryan explained back then:
“So the first Euros we did was in Hungary on a lake, in Lake Balaton in Hungary, and that was a very light wind event. It was kind of fluky. So it felt like it was a bit of a lottery as to what team might have come out on top there. So we're delighted to have won the event, but we still felt we had a bit more to prove.
And then last year the Ireland team defended their title at the Euros in Sardinia. In a windy event, and the Irish knew, they were quite strong in the wind. Conditions were strongly in their favour. So that still left some questions about how the team would perform in a more stable wind event.
“In Holland now, we finished all twelve races, and we performed well. We scored quite far ahead of the other 20-odd boats that were there. So we were pretty happy,” Marcus states. This year, the Ireland team left nothing to chance. They collaborated with a professional video analyst to recap their races in the evening to learn and tweak their performance for the next day.
All the hard work paid off now at the J24 Worlds in Plymouth as Ireland sailed to a history making first ever World Cup crown.
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