Butler's win not beginner's luck

Sailing News: A beginner's story reached a high point last week when Noel Butler arrived home from The Netherlands as the new World Champion of the Laser 2 class, with his crew Stephen Campion, eight years after stepping on board a boat for the first time.

With no connections to the sport, Butler undertook a beginner's course with Alistair and Arthur Rumballs' Irish National Sailing School at the West Pier in Dun Laoghaire, where 5,000 people a year are reported to take lessons.

That year, a Christmas gathering that featured a talk by 1995 Fireball World Champion David O'Brien ignited a career that brought Butler through the ranks of the Laser 2 fleet to Hoorn in Holland last week, where an exciting series in a fleet of over 70 boats ended in triumph.

Apart from winning the National Laser 2 Championship three times in a row, Butler has competed in the Laser Radial, 1720 Sportsboats, various match and team racing events and has recently started helming John Killeen's Nimmo with considerable success. Within hours of the prize-giving last week, he was in Cork to compete in the Fireball Nationals.

After 13 races in a good mix of conditions, Butler and Campion emerged overall winners, beating defending title-holders Kevin Teborek and Ryan Donahue of the US into second overall with three points to spare.

An attempt to protest the Irish crew for using match and team racing style tactics in the final race failed when the international jury ruled against the Americans for failing to give way to the Irish boat on the downwind leg of the final race.

The current European champions ended third overall, while 10 Irish boats took part. Marcus Spillane and Donal Hegarty from the Royal Cork Yacht Club finished eighth overall, having earlier been in contention for the overall win.