Irish Hospitality Students Seek Gold

Two hospitality students have ‘gold in their sights’ as they prepare to represent Ireland at Worldskills, the international skills competition, taking place in Canada in September.

Breid Devlin, Cookery and Kristina Beale, Restaurant Service are in full time training for the event, which this year has attracted entries from 49 countries across the globe. The two Irish hospitality students will be part of an 11 strong Irish team representing a wide range of craft skills. The group will travel to Calgary, Canada, where they will compete against hundreds of the world’s top crafts people. They will be hoping to emulate Ireland’s success in the 2005 WorldSkills when WIT student Sinead Lacey from Wexford won a gold medal in restaurant service.

Both competitors are previous winners of the National Skills Competition and already represented Ireland last year when Kristina won Gold in the European Association of Hotel and Tourism Schools (AEHT) competition in Estonia and Breid picked up a Silver and Bronze at EuroSkills in Rotterdam.

The two hospitality team members are currently experiencing an intensive period of training with the support of Failte Ireland, which has provided funds to enable them to prepare for the event on a full time basis. Each has been allocated a WorldSkills specialist who will provide technical training and are also receiving support from some college lecturers. They attend regular training sessions, undertake sample test exercises based on previous competitions and are being coached on a wide range of subjects related to their craft skill areas.