O’Donovans revel in their ‘easy’ world title victory
THE O’Donovan brothers saved their best performance for their biggest race of the year, claiming world gold in Plovdiv yesterday. Cork pair Gary and Paul were forced to settle for second best at the European Championships in Scotland earlier in the summer but their task in Bulgaria was made easier when Norway lost Kristofer Brun through illness before the race.
A change in strategy helped the Skibbereen pair win the final of the lightweight double sculls by hunting down fast-starters Italy and then producing a beautiful second 1,000 metres to be in control at the end.
‘We had a good start,’ Paul O’Donovan said. ‘I was thinking: “Jeez, this feels like I’m rowing in the single”, the (smooth) rhythm. We had a good start, but the Italians were a little bit in front of us.’
The O’Donovans are known for moving just before the half way mark at 1,000m, but this time they started a series of sprints at 400 metres into the race – with fully 1600m to go.
‘We had just great strokes and kept chucking on through,’ Paul continued. ‘The rowing was so in time that it felt easy to do. We were confident we could keep it going through to the end.’
In the end the Italians came in second, with Belgium claiming bronze ahead of the Norwegians, minus Brun.
The brothers joked to RTÉ that Brun had been out on the town with them the night before and was hungover but they had actually discovered the substitution listed officially on the World Rowing website.
They both said they were sorry that Brun, a friend, did not get his chance to compete. Yet even if Norway had been at full strength in this final it was unlikely to have made a difference to the result.
Ireland performance director Antonio Maurogiovanni was fulsome in his praise for the dynamic duo.
‘An excellent race, an exceptional race. They did absolutely everything right. The field was very, very tough. Very hard,’ he said. ‘I think they perform when they need to perform.’
In yesterday’s other races, Ireland’s new women’s pair of Emily Hegarty and Aifric Keogh finished sixth in their A Final, and admitted that they need to work on their start. They are determined to stay up in the big leagues.
The lightweight women’s double of Aoife Casey and Denise Walsh won their C Final, placing 13th overall. The men’s pair of Shane O’Driscoll and Mark O’Donovan took fourth in their C Final, 16th overall.
Today sees the promise of another medal, perhaps even a gold. Sanita Puspure gets her big chance to win a World Championships medal at 10.19 this morning, Irish time.
The 36-year-old has been the form women’s sculler here. She won her heat and semi-final with ease, setting the fastest time in each. She could win gold, but if she does she will have to go through one of the best and most popular of world champions. Jeannine Gmelin of Switzerland is small at 5ft 7in but she is a battler. In the past two years she has won every race at the top level. Not just finals: every race.
Twice, the two have met this season, in the World Cups in Belgrade and Lucerne. Gmelin took the gold, Puspure the silver. The margins were 2.52 seconds and .23 of a second. Puspure is a happy athlete these days, a woman who has put in huge blocks of training and is benefiting from it. She said she ‘relaxed into the rhythm’ of the semi, yet she won by a street.
Today’s race will be a battle. It is her chance, at last, to arrive. And the chance for Ireland to stake a claim to be a real player in world rowing.
Live coverage of Ireland’s two crews in World Rowing Championships final action today starts at 9.50am on RTÉ2.