Salute mother courage and her Olympian silver sons
TRISH O’Donovan thinks back to when her two sons took their first steps to Rio. “They were rowing before they made their First Holy Communion.”
We are sitting in the window of her modest bungalow at a T-shaped junction in Lisheen, 10 miles from Skibbereen.
Below us lies the great Roaring Water Bay, where the River Ilen meets the sea, Mount Gabriel brooding from the Mizen beyond.
Sometimes a car slows and people take pictures. A tractor towing silage honks its horn. But mostly silence.
I’m here hoping to get some of the stink of Olympic sleaze out of my nostrils, searching for some purity of purpose.
I’m also here to take a sceptical look at Paul O’Donovan’s deadpan dismissal of Olympic rowing as “close your eyes and pull like a dog”.
Finally, I’m here because I believe Trish, mother of Gary and Paul, was crucial to their success and I want to show why.
For starters, I find purity of purpose from just being in this happy home with Trish, her jovial partner Mick McCabe, and a rowing machine above in the attic.
Moving on to my
scepticism about how serious Gary and Paul are about “pull like a dog”. Like their shteak and spuds accents, there’s more to that than meets the ear, never mind the eye.
Gary and Paul, like all their generation in West Cork, have a wide range of accents, including Received Cork Pronunciation — which they used when speaking recently to Pat Kenny. They also like to take the piss.
My belief that Paul was taking it with his throwaway “pull like a dog” is reinforced by reading a powerful analysis by Kieran McCarthy in the Southern Star back in 2015.
“What exactly is in the
water in Skibbereen?” drew on McCarthy’s extensive contacts in local rowing, plus research by Dr Jean Cote, a professor of Sports Science in Ontario, and Dr Giles Warrington, of the University of Limerick. They came to convincing conclusions.
Top sportspersons tended to come from small towns or townland (like Lisheen); have genetic form (Teddy O’Donovan, Gary and Paul’s father, was a champion rower); have natural facilities (like the Ilen River); have historical hinterland (the area has been rowing for aeons); and, finally, have X factors like coach Dominic Casey.
But Trish is another X factor — and the media are selling her short by depicting her simply as just another delighted mammy at Rio.
Trish, slow to claim any credit for the 16 long years she shared the monastic life of her two sons, recalls clearly the golden goal they set themselves as children.
“They wrote it in their copy book in primary school. They said they wanted to be in the Olympics in London 2012.”
Teddy O’Donovan, their father, spotted something special in his two sons from the start. “He said they were racers, not rowers.”
She stops to greet two neighbours, Susan Stenger and Paul Smith, who carry a big bundle of newspapers into the house and join our informal inquiry.
Susan clearly recalls the intensity of Paul aged eight, on a rowing machine at the Skibbereen Show, lasting longer than the grown man beside him.
Trish says that even as small children the two boys had a special bond. “Gary would be crying to get into a room while Paul was crying to get out to him.”
So what was their schedule when they went to secondary school? “They rowed every evening, twice on Saturday and once on Sunday.”
She was separated then, so how did she cope? Trish hesitates. Susan fills me in. “For a while she’d get up in the dark and drive to work in Clonakilty — and come home to cook their dinner.”
Trish says it was a bit easier when she got a job in Skibbereen. “I’d drop them at school, go to work. The Paragon pub gave them a proper lunch for a fiver; meat and potatoes and lots of vegetables, no rolls or rubbish. Then after school straight to the rowing club and home to a huge dinner.”
In training, which Gary and Paul have been most of their lives, her boys each needed a shocking 6,000 calories a day.
So even the Paragon lunch was not enough? “No, I had to cook an evening meal of meat or chicken, potatoes and vegetables, seven days a week.”
A big shopping bill on a secretarial wage? She nods seriously, then looks at Mick and they laugh. “And not just small portions either.”
Like me, Mick loves his grub and has a sweet tooth. But he beams forgivingly at me. “Christmas, the two of them would eat the whole turkey — and forget leaving a Mars bar in the fridge.”
Gary has a high metabolism and can eat almost anything. But Paul has to watch it, carries a weighing scales with him, and carefully studies every label when shopping.
Trish laughs at the reversal of roles. “When they were young they’d be putting biscuits in the trolley and I’d be putting them back. Now Paul is taking sugary stuff from my trolley and shoving it back on the shelves.”
And after their huge dinner? “Heads down on the laptop, studying the form of other rowers, then off to the attic and the rowing machine.” Whoosh, whoosh for three hours.
Trish drove them and other rowers to the National Rowing Centre and regattas in a small Opel Corsa. The boys begged her for a bigger car. “Mammy, we’re like mackerels inside a sardine tin.”
John Callinane, from Dunmanway, called with a Toyota Corolla Estate. Trish was terrified by the size of it. “I would never be able to drive that.” But she did it: her boys needed it.
Slowly, I’m getting a clearer picture of the different character of the two brothers. They remind me of the Kennedys. Gary as JFK, Paul as Bobby. Gary with the great heart, Paul with the fanatic heart.
Trish tries to sum up the great love, great rivalry and great bond between her two boys: “Gary loves Paul, knows he’ll never catch him, but still loves him.”
Does being brothers give them an extra edge? Trish nods emphatically. “They can give out to each other.”
But how does that help? “Being brothers, best rivals and best friends means they can tackle the other openly about performance. They don’t have to be polite as they would to someone who wasn’t a blood relation.”
From 2008, they began to travel across Europe to compete. That meant money. A boat costs €14,000. Hotels don’t come cheap. Trish and their supporters managed by sharing rooms.
She saw most of Europe with her two sons as they blew the competition away. Lots of good times. Some tough ones, too.
“In Bulgaria, Paul got food poisoning.” So he had to come home? Trish shakes her head.
“They lifted him into the boat. He came fourth.” She looks at me with naked pride. “He still came fourth.”
That’s her life for the past 20 years. A long, loving servitude. Looking back, who deserves most credit for her sons’ success?
She replies instantly with a repeated refrain: “Dominic and Dominic and Dominic.” Then she shares something special with me.
“By the end of a race the lactic acid has turned their legs to rubber. So most rowers rest on their oars.”
She looks at me proudly. “But not my sons. Because Dominic told them to stand up. And they do.”
Right hand up to God. Did she really think they could win the gold? Trish stares at me with total truth.
“Yes. I had a bet on with Paddy Power. There was no doubt in my mind.”
She falls silent and I can sense her sons’ pain. Then softly. “Half a second.”
A final question. Paul competes at single sculls in the World Championships at Rotterdam tomorrow. What are his chances?
Trish considers this carefully, no cheerleading. “I don’t know if he’ll be too spun out after the past week.”
She pauses, then sums it up. “I’d say fair play to him, after all he went through, for having the want to do it.”
The want. The O’Donovan brothers are not like Patrick Pearse seeking a sacrificial failure.
They are more like Michael Collins. They want to win. They want the holy grail of that gold medal.
But they want to do it West Cork style. As if it was easy. Hence the shteak and shpuds soundbites, the laid-back soundbites, the codology that it’s all craic.
But it’s not craic. It’s courage. Hemingway’s definition of courage: grace under pressure.
Teddy O’Donovan lit the fuse. Trish O’Donovan tended the sacred flame. Dominic Casey brought it to a blazing silver.
But the precious metal itself was forged out of pure will: the will to win.
Taking leave of Trish, I quote Hillary Clinton to her: “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Trish looks out proudly over the lovely townland of Lisheen. “We have no village, but we raised two Olympians.”
Let us salute Trish O’Donovan. Mother Courage. Mother of champions.
‘Does being brothers give them an extra edge? Trish nods. “Yes, they can give out to each other”’ ‘At Christmas, the two of them would eat the whole turkey — and forget leaving a Mars bar in the fridge’