Waterford
will only be represented in the Rose of Tralee Festival every two years after
organisers decided to give the Festival a revamp.
Organisers
recently confirmed that under revamped rules, the heats which took place in
recent years to select who will go forward to represent their county in the
televised stages of the competition will no longer take place.
Instead
each county will get to take to the stage on a bi-annual basis with only Kerry,
Cork and Dublin contestants selected each year.
Organisers have said that to ensure
that every ‘Rose’ enjoys the ultimate positive experience during her year as her
regions ambassador festival organisers had decided to revamp the selection
process by removing the regional qualification process and raising the age
limit at which point entrants can enter.
The Executive Chair of the Rose of Tralee International
Festival, Anthony O’Gara, said: “Moving from the Regional Festival (staged from
2004 to 2015) to bringing all our Roses directly to the Rose of Tralee
International Festival for the past three years has been generally very
positively received. There is one challenging aspect to the
new format that does not sit well with any of us and that we want to
address, the selection of 32 Roses from 66 for the TV
Selection. Regardless of how sensitively we handle that, it is not in-keeping
with our ethos or our tradition. Our focus is to celebrate and respect the
passion and emotion, and indeed the time and financial investment that every
Rose, her family and centre invest with us.”
The Rose of Tralee International Festival will celebrate
its sixtieth year running in August 2019.
Waterford has won the competition on three occasions.
Orla Burke won in 1977 and six years later Brenda Hyland was the winner. In this
year’s competition Kirsten Mate Maher became Waterford’s third winner of the competition
and the third mixed race winner following on from Rose Luzveminda O'Sullivan from
Galway in 1998 and London Rose, Rose Clare Kambamettu in 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment