Irish sprint queen Phil Healy races her way to 2020 West Cork Sports Star of the Year Award

THE queen of Irish sprinting, Phil Healy, has been crowned the 2020 Celtic Ross Hotel West Cork Sports Star of the Year.

The Ballineen bullet enjoyed a tremendous 2020 when she won three national senior titles from the indoor and outdoor seasons, as well as set a new 200-metre indoor personal best.

This incredible form saw Phil named as the 2020 West Cork Sports Star of the Year during the live virtual awards ceremony on Sunday night.

Special guest Bríd Stack, joining the awards live from Sydney, revealed that Healy is the 2020 winner, much to the Ballineen woman’s surprise.

It’s the second time Healy has won this award, adding to her 2018 win. She now joins a very exclusive club as a two-time winner of the Celtic Ross Hotel West Cork Sports Star of the Year award.

Previously, camogie great Jennifer O’Leary (2002 and 2004) and Skibbereen Olympic rowers Eugene Coakley and Timmy Harnedy (2003 and 2005) won two West Cork Sports Star of the Year awards.

For Healy, 2020 represented an important year in her development, as Ireland’s fastest woman rubberstamped her standing as the best Irish women’s sprinter. She won gold in the women’s 200m at the 2020 national indoor championships in Athlone; her winning time of 23.16 was a championship record.

In the 2020 outdoor national championships Healy secured the 100m (11.71 seconds) and 200m (23.57 seconds) double to take her total of national senior championship titles to 12.

There’s a lot more to come from the Bandon Athletic Club star who has already started this year in style with a fourth-place finish in the 400 metres at the European Indoor Championships. Healy is set to become an Olympian this summer too.

For the fastest woman ever to emerge from West Cork, and a terrific ambassador for West Cork too, 2020 was another terrific year of progress for Phil Healy – there’s just no catching her at the moment!

Now she has been crowned the best in the west, again, as the 2020 West Cork Sports Star of the Year.