ANNOUNCING OUR AWARD WINNERS from the inaugural Police UK Sports Awards, proudly sponsored by Axon, held last week at the National Police Chiefs Council in Manchester.
We are grateful to all our sponsors for supporting the event but in particular to Fujitsu for very generously sponsoring one of the main awards during the evening. Sports Person of the Year which was won by a very deserving athlete Dawn Wood from Essex Police. On the night the award was presented to Dawn by Dan Boyd from Fujitsu.
Dawn joined the Essex Police marine unit sixteen years ago and through hard work and determination is now the chief instructor gaining the qualifications of Yacht master and Yacht master instructor.
Four years ago, Dawn’s maritime experience gave her the opportunity to help train a team of potential ocean rowers from China. Initially Dawn’s role in this project was to teach the shore-based theory subjects, but she quickly learnt about the ocean rowing boats. By the end of the project she was taking the students out on the open seas of China’s coast as their skipper.
In April 2018 Dawn committed to rowing the Atlantic Ocean solo and unsupported to raise awareness about plastics pollution in our oceans. Even with her fifteen years’ experience as a commercial mariner and three years as an ocean rowing coach this was a challenging undertaking and would require a tremendous amount of hard work and training.
The next eight months were spent preparing equipment, food, logistics, route planning, learning the on-board electrics and safety drills and on top of that all the gym work needed to build up the incredible stamina required.
Dawn set out from Gran Canaria to row 3000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on the 5th January 2019. After 51 days at sea, Dawn arrived in Barbados on the 25th February 2019 becoming one of only 7 women on earth to have completed this epic task and the second fastest woman in history missing the world record by just two days.
During this journey she delivered a daily Blog updating followers on her progress. On completion she was interviewed on several national news channels where her positive and bubbly personality shone through.
Not only was this an incredible sporting achievement, she also raised thousands of pounds for the Marine conservation society and their fight against plastic pollution. She proved to be a great ambassador for the British police service during the numerous media interviews international, national and local that followed.
Since this achievement Dawn has attended Schools, Youth clubs and other venues in the community throughout the year telling her story, promoting her sport and bringing attention to her original aims.
