2020 Awards celebrate the best of sport

The 16^th annual Sporting Achievement Awards were once again a great success attracting a large audience and celebrating the depth and diversity of sporting talent on the island.

Although the main Guernsey Sports Commission trophy wasn’t awarded for the sake of fairness in a sporting year devastated by Covid, there were still plenty of outstanding performances to be honoured.

‘It was really heartening to receive so many nominations for each of our awards especially when you consider the limitations imposed by the cancellation of so many off-island competitions and events,’ said the Commission’s Operations Director, Graham Chester.

‘Guernsey sport has always been quick to adapt and it was great to see that competitive sport on the island continued to thrive, even during lockdown, and hear about the creative ways that our sporting organisations worked to ensure activity and competition carried on.’

Congratulations to young swimmer Tatiana Tostevin who scooped the first award of the night – the Lambourne Shield for outstanding individual sporting achievement by a young person aged between 11 and 18. It was Tatiana’s performance represented England South West at the Arena Lisbon International Meet in Portugal in February where she claimed two silver medals in the 50 and 100m backstroke A finals.

Next up was the Beau Sejour Trophy for outstanding U18 team performance which was awarded to the U11s Schools Football Association team. In what was probably one of the only Inter-Insular matches played in any sport in 2020, the U11 team managed to win their Muratti match in Jersey. This was the first time that Guernsey had won since 2015 and to make the match just that little bit more historic, Chloe Ingrouille scored the winning goal, the first schoolgirl ever to score in the match.

There were lots of nominations for the Sport Guernsey and nautical Guernsey Shield for outstanding event organiser but the winners this year for their week of competition utilising the air bridge with the island of man were Guernsey Cricket.

This year’s small team trophy went to the Guernsey Ladies Fours Bowls team of Alison Merrien MBE, Carol Ingrouille, Shirley Petit and Catherine Snell who were crowned British isles Ladies Fours Champions after beating Scotland in the final.

It was great to see nominations for both our para-sport trophies this year. The Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson Trophy for an athlete with a physical impairment was awarded to triathlete Sophie Veron. Badminton star Jay Webber won the Ferbrache & Farrell LLP Trophy for the para-sport athlete with a learning impairment.

Guernsey Raiders strong performance in the 2019/20 season won them the GSC trophy for the outstanding team of the year.

Perhaps the most popular winners of the night were Amos Ozanne and John Bichard, stalwarts of Guernsey Autocross who were awarded the Dave Dorey Memorial Trophy for outstanding contribution to sport.

Between them they have given nearly 100 years of service to Autocross in Guernsey and have no plans to give up yet!

Athletics had two of the three shortlisted nominations for the Sir John Loveridge Trophy for the sportsperson making the greatest progress in the year.

400m hurdler Peter Curtis just pipped distance runner Rosie Williams and water polo player Grace Bennalick to the award.

The final two awards of the night were for the outstanding individual sportsman and sportswoman of the year.

Sprinter Abi Galpin came out on top winning the Guernsey Brewery Salver with cyclist Karina Bowie and golfer Veronica Bougourd also shortlisted.

The Richard Burton Salver for the top sportsman was equally competitive with athlete Ala Chalmers, Janick Radford from squash, golfer Tom Le Huray and swimmer Charlie-Joe Hallett all shortlisted.

It was Chalmers’ gold medal winning effort at the British Championships in September that saw him come out on top and take home the silverware.

The Guernsey Sports Commission congratulates all those nominated for the awards and is looking forward to another great year of sport in 2021.