11 September 2024 By Greg Denieffe Greg Denieffe, unashamedly biased, has something to say about Paris 2024 and beyond.
Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien. At least, that’s what I hope everyone who took part in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games has in mind. You know the old saying: “It’s not the winning but the taking part that counts”? Well, that all depends on your expectations. Some people are happy to get to the starting line whilst others can’t accept defeat under any circumstances. Was Paris the perfect Games? Far from it, but they got a lot right, and I think once the dust has settled, the good memories will outlast the bad. For me, the poor officiating and bad decisions in subjective sports, like boxing and gymnastics need to be thoroughly investigated. Luckily, the rowing events passed off without a major problem, and the course looked fair, even if there were a few outside lane upsets. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if some underperforming crews suffered from bugs, perhaps COVID-19. Personally, I think the IOC need to look at changing the rules about substituting crew members without a medical certificate. After all, places at the Olympics are limited and athletes are missing out on qualification by fractions of a second, only for others to get full accreditation and not ‘compete’ in a meaningful way. I also think that regional qualification, universality, and host nation places took up too many of the 199 boats places allocated for Paris where only 114 boats came through open qualification. That is only 57% – either it is Faster, Higher, Stronger, or it isn’t.
Something from the history books
On 20 July 2021, the Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved a change in the Olympic motto, first adopted in 1884. The change added the word ‘Communiter’ after an en dash to ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’. The new Olympic motto now reads in Latin ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter’. In English, it translates as: ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together’.
Paris 2024 represented the centenary of Ireland competing at the Olympics. The Irish Olympic Council was founded in 1920, recognised by the IOC in 1922 and was given formal recognition as an independent nation in the Olympic movement at the IOC session in Paris in 1924. In 1952, the Council changed its name from the Irish Olympic Council to the Olympic Council of Ireland, and in 2018, the Olympic Council of Ireland was renamed the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
Something for the history books
Ireland qualified seven boats for the Olympic rowing events for the first time. This was one more than Tokyo, but more importantly, four crews reached the A finals (two in Tokyo). The medal haul – a gold and a bronze – brings the total number of Olympic rowing medals to five. Paul O’Donovan became the first person to win medals for Ireland at three different Olympics. If you told me this was possible in 2012, when Sanita Pušpure was our only representative, I would have said you were ‘on something’. Going forward, it will be difficult for Ireland to achieve these numbers, especially with the absence of lightweight events. Outside of rowing, Ireland won gold in boxing, gymnastics (a first) and swimming, and added two bronze medals in swimming. Seven Olympic medals in one Games is a new record. Fintan McCarthy and O’Donovan retained their Olympic title – only the second time in history Ireland has achieved this – and days later, boxer Kellie Harrington became the first Irish woman to do so.
As well as the Team Ireland logo, the Irish athletes wore a county crest on the sleeves of their opening ceremony outfits. Remarkably, 30 of the 32 counties were represented. By the time of the closing ceremony, 134 people had earned their WOA certificate, including 32 from Northern Ireland. Níos Tapúla, Níos Airde, Níos Láidre – Éire le Chéile. The official press release said that the two counties to miss out were Leitrim and Westmeath. However, there is a Westmeath patch in this photograph but not one for Roscommon, who had two athletes selected.
Something inside so strong
When it comes to sport, strength of character is as important as strength of body. Tokyo tested the character of several top rowers, including Oliver Zeidler, the German sculler; and the Great Britain LM2x crew of Emily Craig and Imogen Grant. Both crews reached the top step of the podium in Paris after suffering enormous disappointment in Tokyo. In the Irish M2x, Philip Doyle went to Tokyo with hopes of a medal and left with shattered dreams. As a doctor in Belfast, the COVID pandemic took a heavy toll and the potential shown in winning silver at the 2019 World Rowing Championships wasn’t realised and he and partner Ronan Byrne could only manage a 10th place finish. The next time he raced internationally was the 2022 World Championships and with a new sculling partner, ended up in Final C.
However, in 2023 he was paired with Clonmel’s Daire Lynch and the dream of an Olympic medal was rekindled when they finished third at the World Championships behind the Netherlands and Croatia. In 2024, their form held up, and with two World Cup medals on the way to Paris, a podium place was again a strong possibility. An easy win in their heat was followed by an outstanding performance in their semi-final (see photograph above). The final was supposed to be a race for silver behind the reigning World Champions, who were unbeaten in 2024. In the end, Romania, who looked destined for Final B a dozen strokes from the finish in their semi-final, only to catch the Serbian double who had sculled themselves to a standstill, raced to the gold medal from an outside lane. Lynch and Doyle chased the Dutch home, and Ireland had its first men’s heavyweight rowing medal at an Olympic Games. But it could easily have been a different story; Lynch had battled a virus for most of the week, and Doyle’s neck injury returned in the push for the line. Full story on The Irish Times.
If Lynch and Doyle were possible medallists before the Games began, Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan looked nailed on for a medal in the men’s lightweight double. However, form suggested that whilst gold was a possibility, it was not guaranteed. They managed only one competition together since the 2023 World Championships, the World Cup in Lucerne, and there, they were beaten in their semi-final and only finished third in the final. But cometh the hour, cometh the men from Skibbereen. A clean sweep of wins in heat, semi-final and final in Tokyo was repeated in Paris. McCarthy has never lost a race at the Olympics, and the duo have never lost a championship race since they were first selected together in 2019: a total of 23 races delivering two Olympic titles, three World Championship titles, and two European Championship titles. That is something to celebrate.
Something to build on
As mentioned above, two other Irish crews reached their A Finals, and whilst they finished outside the medals, both crews can feel they more than justified their places on Team Ireland.
The women’s lightweight double of Margaret Cremen (University College Cork R. C.), who began rowing at Lee R. C. in Cork, and Aoife Casey (Skibbereen R. C.), daughter of Ireland lightweight coach, Dominic Casey, reached the B Final in Tokyo finishing 2nd (8th overall) and improved that to 5th in Paris.
The other A Finalist crew hail from Enniskillen, County Fermanagh; the men’s pair of Ross Corrigan (Portora B. C.) and Nathan Timoney (Enniskillen Royal B. C.) qualified the boat for Paris by finishing third at the 2023 World Championships. Like the M2x, they managed only one competition together since then, the World Cup in Varese, where they finished up in the B Final. For Timoney, injury prevented him from any further racing before Paris and getting the crew back together and finishing 6th in an Olympic final was a huge achievement.
Something unexpected
Three Irish crews ended up in the B Final. The women’s four secured their place in Paris by claiming first place in the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in May 2024. The women’s pair was the top sweep boat for the women’s squad, and qualification for the four represented ‘goal achieved’ with a top 9 place in Paris guaranteed. They saved their best race for their B Final, winning ahead of Denmark and Australia and placing 7th overall – crew: Emily Hegarty (University College Cork R. C.), Natalie Long (Lee Valley R. C.), Eimear Lambe (Old Collegians B. C.), and Imogen Magner (Carlow R. C.).
Irish hopes were high for the women’s pair who were seeded No. 4 by World Rowing, the position they finished in at the 2023 World Championships. It also reflected their performances at the three 2024 World Cup Regattas: silver in Varese, bronze in Lucerne, and silver in Poznan. In Paris, they came through the heat behind fellow seeds, Romania. However, something was amiss in their semi-final; they finished last, nearly 18 seconds behind Australia; 17 seconds behind the U.S.A., who they beat by 5 seconds at World Cup II; and 14 seconds behind Lithuania who took the final qualifying place. They took 2nd place in the B Final and 8th overall. Of all the Irish crews, I think this pair, made up of bronze medallists in Tokyo: Aifric Keogh (Gráinne Mhaol B. C.) and Fiona Murtagh (University of Galway B. C.), deserved better, but their performance only reinforces my view that you need a lot of things to go your way if are to line-up on the start at a major championship, healthy, fit, and technically ready for everything an outdoor water sport has to throw at you.
The last Irish crew was a women’s double made up of rookie Olympians: Zoë Hyde (Tralee R. C. [honourable mention to Killorglin R. C.] and Alison Bergin (Fermoy R. C.). This double certainly has potential, and I hope they can reform for the 2025 season. Bergin is only 22, with silver and bronze medals from the World U23 Championships. Hyde has a little more senior experience, winning a bronze medal at the 2022 World Championships partnered by Sanita Pušpure and finishing fourth with Bergin at the 2023 edition. In Paris, they avoided the race of death – the repechage – where the last-place crew leaves the competition without even a minor final to race by finishing 3rd in their heat. In the semi-final, they finished 5th, under 4 seconds off an Olympic final place. In the B Final, they claimed 4th place and 10th overall.
Something for the geekend
A look at the final medal table in Paris will reveal that 15 countries claimed at least one medal. It does not include the silver medal won by the neutral athlete, Yauheni Zalaty, in the men’s single sculls. However, the strangest thing is that the list does not include the host nation, France. The last time France did not register a single rowing medal was in Barcelona in 1992. In September 2021, The French Rowing Federation appointed Jürgen Gröbler as Executive High-Performance Consultant, hoping to maximise their medal count in Paris. The press release announcing his appointment stated: “This appointment clearly shows the ambitions of the FFA management team and its National Technical Director: to make rowing one of the driving forces of French sport in the upcoming Olympiad.”
Something in the water
Anything London can do, Paris can do better. Particularly when it comes to water pollution. Sewage discharges into the Thames are nothing new – see: An Unholy Amalgam of Disparate Prints – but they didn’t interfere with the Olympic programme back in 2012. For months leading up to the 2024 Games, the River Seine was monitored, cleaned (at a cost of €1.4 billion), and even swam in by the mayor of Paris to prove its suitability for open water events. However, pollution in the river meant that pre-event training was cancelled, and the men’s triathlon was postponed hours before the first leg, the 1,500m swim. Several athletes, including Ireland’s double medal winner in the pool, Daniel Wiffen, decided they would not risk a practice swim in the river before the 10,000m open water marathon. According to himself, Wiffen swam his “first and last” open water race in Paris, finishing 18th in 1:57:20.1. The man from County Armagh won gold in the pool in the 800m and bronze in the 1,500m, and he was selected as one of the Irish flagbearers for the closing ceremony; however, E-coli infected water swallowed during the race on the 9 August had other ideas, and he had to withdraw from attending Le Grand Finale in the Stade de France.
Luckily, Ireland’s Chef de Mission, Gavin Noble, could turn to another water sport gold medallist, Fintan McCarthy, to pick up the tricolour and join Mona McSharry on 11 August for the closing ceremony. McCarthy is the fourth Irish rowing flagbearer for an Olympic Games following Frank Moore (Opening Ceremony 1976), Pat McDonagh (Opening Ceremony Winter Games 1992), and Gary O’Donovan (Closing Ceremony 2016).
McDonagh competed in the bobsleigh in 1992 but had already competed for Ireland in rowing at both the 1980 and 1988 Games. In fact, Ireland had two two-man bobsleigh crews in 1992, and both had Neptune rowers on board. Gerry Macken, himself an Irish international rower in the early 1980s was in the other bob.
In total, seven rowers carried their country’s flags at the Closing Ceremony, including Kathleen Noble who represented Uganda in the W1x. Kathleen’s father, Gerry, is from Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, and you’ve guessed it… so too is Gavin.
Something special
Or rather, someone special. Paul O’Donovan is now the most decorated Irishman in Olympic history, and his international medal collection has grown since collecting his second consecutive Olympic title in Paris.
Much has been written in the media about his and Fintan McCarthy’s unorthodox return home from Paris. The pair of Skibbereen scallywags left Paris ahead of the team’s official return to Dublin, principally because O’Donovan was starting his new job as a junior doctor in Cork. Flying back to Ireland on the same flight was Kieran Duggan who found himself sitting on a plane which was carrying several Irish Olympians, and the passengers were congratulating the rowers on their gold medal success.
After landing at Dublin Airport, Kieran spoke to Fintan and asked him how he and Paul planned to get to Cork.
“He said that they were hoping to get the Aircoach down if it wasn’t booked out, so one of the lads in my group said ‘Sure, Kieran is going to Cork – he can bring ye,’ so I told them I had plenty of room,” Kieran explained.
“Fintan said ‘I might take you up on that’ so I thought I had better hang on for them because they were delayed a bit at the carousel in the baggage hall so that’s how I ended up giving Fintan and Paul and Natalie Long [of the women’s four], a lift back to Cork.”
A leaked recording of the conversation in the car is on the TikTok website of Séamus Lehane.
After starting his new job, Paul immediately took time off to fly to Canada where he added the World Championship title in the LM1x to his CV. This is the second time he has done an Olympic and World Championship medal double in the same year, having already done the Rio/Rotterdam double in 2016. In 2021, three weeks after the Tokyo Olympics, and with the World Championships in Shanghai cancelled, he (and McCarthy) had to settle for winning The Double Sculls Challenge Cup at the delayed Henley Royal Regatta.
Something before I go
O’Donovan has now won three Olympic medals: two gold and one silver; seven World gold medals; and three European gold and two silver medals. The question now is: what next?
Barely had the sun set after the final race in Paris before thoughts turned to Los Angeles and whether the Irish lightweights were considering making the transition to the world of the heavyweights. Rowing Ireland’s High-Performance Director, Antonio Maurogiouvanni, has been in position for seven years and he has used that time wisely, not only helping fulfil the potential medal haul from the lightweights at World and Olympic level but successfully starting the process of propelling Ireland onto open weight medal podiums. There is a good article from 3 August 2024 in the Irish Examiner that has positive news for supporters of Irish rowing in this regard. You can find the article here.
