Sanita cruises on with single scull heat win in sunny Belgrade

SANITA PUSPURE shone for Ireland in sun-kissed Belgrade yesterday after winning her heat of the women’s single scull at the World Cup.

Gary and Paul O’Donovan followed Puspure to the semi-finals in the lightweight double scull with a second-place finish.

Their Skibbereen team-mates Mark O’Donovan and Shane O’Driscoll made the men’s pair ‘C’ final through the repechage after struggling in their heat.

Aifric Keogh and Emily Hegarty (women’s pair) and Aileen Crowley and Monika Dukarska (double scull) also made semi-finals when both finished third in their heats.

This was Crowley and Dukarska’s first World Cup race together, with the duo having made the long journey from Killorglin, Co Kerry for the competition in Serbia.

However, for Polish-born Dukarska this is just another part of a journey which began when she moved to Kerry from Poznan, aged 16.

“My mother first went to Ireland on her own after her workplace in Poland shut down,” she said.

“‘I’ll go over to make a few extra pound. One day she rang home and said, ‘I’ve been offered a permanent contract in Killorglin’.

“So I packed up the 16 years of my life into two suitcases with my dad and sister.”

Dukarska soon went back east to compete for Poland in Europe’s under-age regatta, the Coupe de la Jeunesse. Ireland, though, had a special place in her heart.

She recalled: “I started calling Ireland home so then I decided I wanted to compete for them and applied for a passport in 2012.”

Rebecca Shorten helped the Great Britain four crew to a place in the World Cup final after finishing second in their heat.

The 24-year-old from Belfast is the only Northern Ireland rower in the GB squad at the opening World Cup regatta of 2018.

Netherlands won the heat and will join Great Britain in tomorrow’s final.

Shorten was rowing alongside Fiona Gammond, Holly Norton and Karen Bennett in Serbia. IT is a curious fact that has not gone unnoticed by Jonny Sexton’s international team-mates. On every single occasion that Ireland has won the Six Nations championship this decade his wife, Laura, has been pregnant.

In August she will give birth to their third child and, unsurprisingly, the couple have had to take a good-natured ribbing.

“The lads are putting awful pressure on her to keep going,” Sexton says, with a grin.

His children — Luca (4) and Amy (2) — ensure that he doesn’t think about rugby 24/7 like he used to. “There’s definitely greater perspective now,” he says.

He feels that as a parent he is much more mindful about downtime and recovery, especially as the extra-curricular pursuits of old have been put to bed.

“My interests have changed a lot when you’ve got two young kids... whether you like it or not,” he says. “My downtime years ago was spending time with the lads — going for dinner, going to the cinema, playing golf, poker, standard stuff that you do. But that’s all changed now. It’s about spending time with your kids.”

But having children has not hampered Sexton’s game one bit. If anything, at 32, he is at the peak of his powers. He’s had a dream season — his last-gasp drop goal in Paris set Ireland on course for only a third ever Grand Slam — and he was instrumental in Leinster’s glorious 2018: last weekend they added the Guinness PRO14 trophy to the Champion’s Cup they had won in Bilbao at the beginning of May.

Today, he is speaking from the principal’s office at Scoil Maelruain, Old Bawn, Tallaght, where he’s helping to launch Laya Healthcare’s Super Troopers initiative. It’s a plan designed to get kids more active and it’s something he cares about.

“It’s putting exercise into their homework,” he says. “It’s getting the parents to think more about activity time with their children.”

He is conscious of the country’s worsening obesity problem — one where 40% of children are now classified as overweight.

“Super Troopers won’t eradicate obesity,” he says. “But it’s a step in the right direction.

“I grew up in an active family and that’s how I bring up my kids. I’m lucky though, the latest I’m home is 4pm — we start early with rugby training, so I’ve got plenty of time with them. I know not every parent is able to do that, but the more they think about getting their children active the better.”

Outside the principal’s window, scores of eight and nine-year-olds are playing in the yard. It was the round ball, rather than the oval one that fed Sexton’s sporting fantasies at that age.

“Playing for Man United was the dream,” he says. “As a kid the only night I was allowed to stay up late was when United were playing in the European Cup — maybe that’s why I like them so much!

“I was in a national school that was very football-oriented so I was drawn to it, but then moved to a rugby school [St Mary’s College, Dublin] and that took over.”

Sexton signalled his talents at an early age. At 16 he helped St Mary’s win the Leinster Senior Schools Cup — the holy grail of underage rugby in the province — and his was a name that was spoken about as a future international while still a teenager. Although he is now seen as the very embodiment of Leinster’s march to success, he grew up in a household with an allegiance to Munster. His father was devoted to the Munster cause and his godfather — Irish Independent columnist Billy Keane — is steeped in the traditions of Munster rugby and Kerry football.

“Leinster weren’t big when I was growing up,” he says. “When I was a teenager, Munster games were the big ones and Leinster were underachieving. But I still used to go down to Donnybrook on a Friday night and watch a lot of games there. I knew Trevor Brennan through Bective [Rangers, in Donnybrook].

“I used to work in the bar on a Friday night for Bective. I’d be working there and could go out and watch the game and then work again after the game — that’s where I got interested in Leinster and wanted to play for Leinster Schools.”

With the exception of two seasons in Paris — following a big-money move to Racing 92 in 2013 — it’s been Leinster all the way. It was against Racing that Leinster claimed their latest Champion’s Cup success and Sexton’s performance showed his old team just what they had been missing. He has mixed views about his time in France.

“I do and I don’t [have regrets]. I look back now and it was a great couple of years in my life — I learned a lot, I had a great life experience. But the rugby was up and down. I made some great friends but we didn’t win anything. I think I would have regretted it if Leinster had won a European Cup and I wasn’t there — and it looked like they could have. They lost to Toulon in the semis.”

Sexton turns 33 next month and knows he has entered the final chapter of his career. But he insists he is not thinking too much about what he will do when he hangs up his boots. He is determined to keep his body right and play more — much more.

“In an ideal world I’d like to play three more seasons. But you don’t know — you see certain people who are outliers in certain

❝ My downtime years ago was spending time with the lads... but now it’s all about being with the kids