AN EVEN KEEL
Paul O’Donovan believes his composure has been crucial in claiming five world titles
IN THE days before becoming world champion for a fifth time, Paul O’Donovan turned to home in an effort to unwind and forget about the water. ‘I have been buried deep in this collection of Frank O’Connor’s short stories. There are some interesting ones in there, that really get you thinking. And he’s a good Cork author too,’ he explained of his recent reading habits.
As O’Donovan has discovered, there was much more to O’Connor’s work than My Oedipus Complex and First Confession, but the author still represents a departure from Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, whom he read prior to the Tokyo Olympics.
When pressed on his favourite book from the Russian masters, O’Donovan suggests The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s great morality tale.
One of its famous maxims is ‘above all, don’t lie to yourself’. It’s fair to say that the world’s best lightweight rower has remained true to himself, despite all the success of the past few years.
O’Donovan and his brother Gary became such public property with their irreverent interviews during and after the Rio Olympics that they even ended up on the hit Graham Norton Show – joining their fellow West Corkman – on BBC One.
However, another clip – which went viral last week – probably more reflects his understated character.
Moments after O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy destroyed the field in last week’s World Championship lightweight scull finals, RTÉ’s David Gillick wondered what it felt like to be five-time world champion. ‘It’s fine, yeah,’ O’Donovan replied laconically.
It left some wondering if, after Olympic gold and silver medals, five world championships and three European titles, the Lisheen native was getting a little blasé about success.
‘No, that’s not the case at all,’ O’Donovan insisted over a video call from his college accommodation at UCC last Tuesday. ‘That is just the way I am and the way I felt about the race. It was fine.
‘I don’t get too excited about winning or losing. Rowing is about the challenge for me. I don’t get too high or too happy about winning races, because there are going to be times when I won’t be winning races and I would like to think that I will be fine on those days, too.
‘It is not a case of me getting blasé about winning, because that is just one part of the process and sometimes winning a race is going to be out of your control. So when I said I’m fine, I just said how I felt rather than being blasé about winning.’
Their dominance in the Czech Republic added to O’Donovan’s aura and enhanced his case to be currently considered Ireland’s greatest sportsperson, as well as further inserting himself in the middle of the all-time conversation.
It is a discussion that doesn’t really interest the 28-year-old.
‘I don’t ever think about that. You can’t compare different sports and different eras,’ he pointed out.
THE success of Irish rowing now means that World and European Championships now are regularly broadcast on our screens, which wasn’t the case when O’Donovan initially sat in a boat. Still, the fact that an Irishman had just become world champion for a fifth time only made a ripple in a week where national debate revolved around Stephen Kenny and the international soccer team.
‘I never worry about any of that. I do this because I enjoy rowing and enjoy the challenge of it. I have never done it for medals and I don’t do it for media coverage either. But I think it is great for the sport that it is getting more recognition now and for the young kids who want to come into it, they can see a bit more of it on television and things, it is not just the Olympics.
‘In terms of last week, I think there was plenty of coverage.’
Ahead of the Paris Olympics, there will be even more attention on O’Donovan. Not just as the figurehead of Ireland’s rowing revolution, but because he can become the first Irish athlete to win medals at three different Games – and the first since the legendary Pat O’Callaghan to win gold at two Olympics. But, just as he doesn’t contemplate his own greatness, neither does he take stock of his own glittering gold.
‘No, I haven’t sat back and reflected (on the success) too much. To be honest, I have lost a lot more races than I have won over the years. Fintan beat me in the National Championship and I was beaten the year before by Darragh Lynch. I wouldn’t say that I am unbeatable or anything. There are plenty of races I don’t win.’
Skibbereen has become the centre-point of the rowing revolution. In this part of West Cork, Gaelic football has been the primary sporting religion and remains so. O’Donovan played with Ilen Rovers until his early teens. Before ‘a few of them decided to get serious about the rowing,’ as he recalled.
His father Teddy had the brothers out in a boat long before they were in their teens. ‘He was coaching at the time and in his heart, he was a rower and wanted us to be rowers.
‘But he never pushed it onto us, he encouraged us to do what we wanted. It was our decision to concentrate on the sport.
‘I played Gaelic up until I was 13 or so, I played a bit of rugby as well, but mostly Gaelic. When I was 13, my brother Gary, myself, Shane O’Driscoll, a few others, we decided we were really keen about the rowing and were going to take it seriously.
‘It wasn’t like a serious debate about it, more like a group of teenagers sitting in a treehouse deciding this is what they were going to do.’
From there, a remarkable Irish sporting story has grown.
The National Dairy Council have recruited O’Donovan as an ambassador and he has always been proud of his agricultural roots. When he is asked to pinpoint why a small part of West Cork has produced so many elite rowers, he knows farming has played its part.
‘To be honest, a lot of us down in Skibb are big dairy farmers, we all come from farming stock, and our strength is built from the ground up really, because we are working the land, milking the cows.
‘Our strength and endurance is built up from the farming work and I suppose rowing is a natural fit, because it is a strength and endurance sport.
‘Of course, we have great facilities, a great river in Skibbereen. The crews all work hard and good coaching too, coaches who are into learning, who want to learn more and every year, try to make
some changes to the training programme so we can get better. And that is something that filters through the club, the idea of working hard and always learning, because if you don’t do that, others will pass you out.
‘But all over the country now, not just in Skibbereen, there are clubs producing some excellent junior rowers. And everyone is putting in the work. Sometimes, that is what rowing can be about, the amount of time you have put into training.
‘It is about the mileage you put in, and you can see the results on the water.’
The best rower in the world was back in college last week. He has just begun his final year in medicine at UCC. His college commitments meant himself and McCarthy spent most of the year training apart, not that it was noticeable last weekend. O’Donovan sees no conflict between being an elite athlete and a full-time student.
‘I never found it difficult juggling both. I don’t know any different because, before this, I was doing physiotherapy in UCD for four years and training all the time. And it is the same in UCC now. Rowing gives you a good worth ethic anyway – you can apply that to study.
‘With rowing and the training we do, we are encouraged to analyse and ask questions of ourselves and why we are doing certain things in training.
‘And you can apply that to the studies too – become analytical and critical of the information that you are given.’
Always learning, both in and out of the water. It is why Paul O’Donovan has scaled such heights.
And he’s not done yet.
I do it because I love rowing and the challenge – not for medals or media coverage