Fiona Murtagh and Aifric Keogh won Silver for the Women’s Pair in the Rowing World Cup in Spain over the weekend, adding to the Bronze medal won by the Men’s Double of Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch
Up against reigning World Champions Veronique Meester and Ymkje Clevering of the Netherlands, Ireland were the quickest boat through the second half of the race and brought it right down to one second between themselves and the Netherlands when they got to the line.
“It’s our second event since Worlds, our second event in the pair together so we’re constantly learning and this is a good start to the Olympic year” said Fiona Murtagh.
On the last few months since the World Championships, Aifric Keogh said, “We’ve had a really good winter together, I think this is the longest we’ve ever been in one boat, usually it’s a lot of chopping and changing so that’s been nice, it gives us the space to try things out”.
Doyle and Lynch just squeezed past the German crew into third position coming to the line in the men’s double.
“We had one of our fastest starts ever” says Doyle “And then we looked around and we weren’t in the medal contentions. The plan was we had a sprint up our sleeves to go early at the 700 meters but then Daire called it early at 750 meters.”
“A part of me was looking at the stroke coach thinking, how is this going to last? But, it did and it increased and the speed was good, and I knew from the speed on the stroke coach that we were coming into the medals no matter what happened because no one could match what we were doing”.
There was also a fourth-place finish for the Women’s Four and a fifth for Sanita Puspure in the A Final of the Women’s Single Scull.
Konan Pazzaia won the B Final of the Men’s Single. In one of the tightest races of the day, Pazzaia had the grandstand on their toes coming into the final few meters of the race.
Nathan Timoney and Ross Corrigan of Enniskillen, Fermanagh finished out their World Cup with a win in the B Final of the Men’s Pair.
Next up from the High-Performance team is the European Championships taking place in Szeged, Hungary from April 25th to 28th.
Sport for Business Perspective:
Great to see Rowing continue to deliver on the World stage. It is one of the high hopes to carry on a two game streak with medals at the Paris Olympics and the strength in depth continues to look impressive.
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