Four Ones to Watch announced as Sailing Worlds approach

Helena Lucas, Heiko Kroeger, Udo Hessels and Aleksander Wang-Hansen are all part of the IPC’s Ones to Watch campaign for sailing. 20 Aug 2013
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Helena Lucas

Helena Lucas

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By IPC

All four of these athletes will take part in next week’s World Championships, which will attract 120 athletes in 75 boats from 18 countries and they will be the first major disabled sailing event since the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

The 2013 IFDS Sailing World Championships begin on Sunday (25 August), and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), together with the International Association for Disabled Sailing (IFDS), has announced the four Ones to Watch athletes for the Championships and upcoming Paralympic cycle.

The IPC’s Ones to Watch initiative showcases the top athletes around the world on the road to the next Paralympic Games, and all four of the identified sailors have won medals on the Paralympic stage and their stories have increasingly become known throughout the media.

Headlining the list is Great Britain’s Helena Lucas, the gold medallist in the 2.4mR single-person keelboat at London 2012. She was the only female athlete competing in her event at the last Paralympics and has become a household name in Great Britain for her performance on the Weymouth waters.

Germany’s Heiko Kroeger joins Lucas on the list as another athlete in the single-person keelboat event. Kroeger finished second behind Lucas at London 2012, but the Sydney 2000 Paralympic champion is a veteran in the sport, and with Audi sponsoring him is aiming to reach the top of the podium in Rio for the first time in 16 years.

The final two selections – Norway’s Aleksander Wang-Hansen and the Netherlands’ Udo Hessels – compete in the sonar three-person keelboat event.

Hessels, who won the event in London with teammates Marcel van de Veen and Mischa Rossen, has been sailing competitively since he was 25, when he took up the sport as part of his rehabilitation after suffering a spinal-cord injury due to a tumor in his back.

Wang-Hansen finished with the bronze medal at London 2012 and comes from a sporting family. He is the older brother of Sebastian Wang-Hansen, who competed at the London 2012 Olympics in windsurfing, and he is the cousin a Mats Wang-Hansen, who was a world champion in sailing back in 2000.

All four of these athletes will take part in next week’s World Championships, which will attract 120 athletes in 75 boats from 18 countries and they will be the first major disabled sailing event since the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

The Opening Ceremony will be held on Sunday evening (25 August), and racing will commence on Monday (26 August) with two races scheduled daily.

These names are not necessarily the Ones to Watch athletes for Rio 2016, but are the ones to keep your eyes on throughout the upcoming major international regattas.

A number of other activities will also be implemented across social media in a concerted effort to boost the profiles of these athletes and make them household names for years to come.

The IPC’s Ones to Watch campaign launched in the lead-up to London 2012, when a new section was included within Paralympic.org, entitled Ones to Watch. This series of pages was designed to raise the profiles of leading medal contenders in Paralympic sports and act as an essential media resource.