MacArthur announces sailing retirement
Dame Ellen MacArthur announces retirement from competitive sailing
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By inthenews. |  |
Sunday, 04, Oct 2009 12:39
By Alistair Potter.
Dame Ellen MacArthur has announced her retirement from professional sailing in order to focus on her environmental campaigning.
The 33-year-old yachtswoman, who hit the headlines in 2006 after setting a new world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the planet, said she will give up sailing competitively after spending two months on the remote south Atlantic island of South Georgia later that year.
"I still sail, I still love sailing and I'll still sail for pleasure," she explained to BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Disks host Kirsty Young.
"I sail for charity - the Ellen MacArthur Trust for kids with cancer, leukaemia.
"But as long as this [environmental] challenge is there to be communicated, will I invest four years of my life to sailing round the world?
"No. This new understanding for me has become far more important."
Since setting the record in 2006, Dame Ellen's mark of 71 days and 14 hours was broken by French sailor Francis Joyon, who completed a full circle of the globe in less than two months.
And although she admitted there is "a part of me that wants the record back", she is prepared to give up the challenge in favour of a higher calling.
She said: "I never thought it was possible that anything in my life could eclipse sailing.
"But after being in South Georgia, learning these lessons, and the more I researched into it the more frightened I got.
"It has really scared me to the point that I can't go back to sea and go around the world again because this really matters."
Dame Ellen currently champions a number of environmental causes and charities and is preparing to launch a nationwide campaign to promote sustainable living.