SKIBBEREEN kayaker Anaïs O’Donovan has been named a finalist in the Most Inspiring Person of the Year award in this year’s Outsider magazine awards.
The awards, which honour outdoor athletes and adventure sports people, will take place later this month.
‘This is a huge honour to have been nominated alongside some of Irish greatest individuals. I am proud to have been able to represent Ireland in freestyle kayaking, but I am even prouder that I successfully raised over €15,000 for the RNLI,’ Anaïs told The Southern Star.
‘This award is much more than recognition for my hard work,’ she added. ‘I hope that this award nomination will inspire others to try out niche, outdoor sports and encourage the younger generation to be active, set goals and live their best lives. I am honoured to be a role model for sport in Ireland, but more so for young women growing up in small rural areas.’
Anaïs was ranked eighth in the world at the Canoe Freestyle World Championships in Nottingham in 2022, a sport she’d only recently taken up.
A year later, she qualified to represent Ireland.
However, the sport is self-funded and she couldn’t afford to travel to compete so was forced to give up her spot to someone else, an experience she describes as heart-breaking.
But she put her energy into a positive action instead, and brainstormed the idea of paddling for 24hrs for the RNLI.
‘Picking the charity was easy, because if we ever get into difficulty on the water, the RNLI are the first people to help us out.’
Anaïs and her friends have also hosted free kayaking workshops, rescue skills development, and they ran a Rescue Olympics competition where five teams went head-to-head performing various rescue scenarios against each other.
To vote for Anaïs visit www.outsider.ie
