MacArthur Takes Top Prize

ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year 2001 Ellen MacArthur has picked up another award in Great Britain. Last week she was named the Sunday Times Sports Woman of the Year 2001.

The words were simple, but the message went to the heart of the occasion. “It’s not about being the first woman. It’s about being first,” said Ellen MacArthur after accepting her award for being voted The Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year.

It was an insight into the extraordinary drive and determination that saw the 24-year-old from landlocked Derbyshire sail solo around the world in less than 100 days to finish second in the punishing Vendée Globe, win the 3,000-mile Challenge Mondial with Alain Gautier, finish second with Gautier in the Transatlantic Jacques Vabre race and win the ocean racing world championship.

MacArthur doesn’t believe in heroes, but she knows how important examples of achievement are to aspiring athletes. As a schoolgirl she reached for the books of great ocean sailors such as Robin Knox-Johnson, Francis Chichester and Chay Blyth. Appropriately, Sir Chay presented her with the trophy at the ceremony at the Gibson Hall in the City of London.

Closer to home, she saw her grandmother, denied the chance to go to university by the chauvinism of her younger days, obtain a degree in modern languages in her late 70s. “Many people inspired me, sowed the seeds of ambition, and of course it would be nice to think there are young people who look at what’s happened to me and realise that if you’re determined enough, nothing can stop you,” MacArthur said.