The ploughing team, which will represent Ireland at this year’s World Ploughing Championships in Minnesota in the US, has been busy in the past few days.
Eamonn Tracey and John Whelan prepared all of their equipment this week and loaded their competition tractors and ploughs into shipping containers yesterday, June 20.
This is the start of a long journey for the equipment.
2-month journey across the Atlantic
Both ploughing outfits left Carlow train station in a container yesterday and were destined for Dublin.
The ploughs will then be shipped from Dublin to Antwerp in Belgium. From there, they will travel to New York – the first US stop of the journey – before hitting the railway tracks again.
The containers are due to land at their final destination on August 7; meaning they will have travelled for almost two months.
John and Eamonn will arrive on August 16 to get some practise on the local soil before the competition, which will take place on August 30 and 31.
Eamonn Tracey, competitor; Anna Marie McHugh, general secretary of the World Ploughing Organization; Ann Siney, executive administrator of the World Ploughing Organization; and John Whelan, competitor, loading up equipment for the World Ploughing Championships
Previous success
Eamonn Tracey is the current runner-up of the two-furrow conventional class, while John Whelan is the current runner-up the two-furrow reversible class.
Eamonn has two other world titles to his name – 2014 and 2015, while John won the world title in his class in 2013 and 2017.