Daire Lynch raced in the Senior Men’s single scull championship event at the National Rowing Centre on Inniscarra Lake in Cork on 22nd August.
The event was packed with the best in the country and had two Tokyo Olympic Gold medallists Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy and Gary O’Donovan the Rio Silver medallist. Daire had raced the weekend before at Henley coming second in the Quad scull event there and he felt that he was beginning to come back into form after being in in the best shape of his life in Tokyo as the reserve for the men’s double scull. Daire was drawn in lane one with Paul O’Donovan in lane two and Fintan McCarthy in lane four with the other Skibbereen scullers in lane three & five with Dave Neill from the Commercial club in lane six. The weather conditions were perfect. In the pre race row warm up earlier in the morning Daire got a great sweat up and come in well warmed. This primed his body for the event a few hours later. The plan was to stay with Fintan off the start because he has an explosive first 500 and then to be able to stay solid in the middle and be able to stay with Paul when he unleashes his legendary last 750. In the race the first 500 went as expected and by the 1000 Daire felt that he had not expended to much energy and was in a close third position. After the 1000 Daire started to go for it and give it everything he had to make up the ground and get ahead. He felt good and went for it and by the 1500 was in the lead with Fintan in second and Gary in third with Paul in fourth. With about 600 to go Paul unleashed his finishing push, Fintan fell back a small bit and now Daire was in the lead. Paul was now making serious inroads into Daire’s lead but he held on to win. Paul was second and Fintan third. Daire also set a personal best time over the course at 6:53.6
Clonmel’s fist senior championship win since 1920. A historic day. Congrats to all that have helped to make the dream a reality.
Junior Women’s Double scull:
We also had our Junior women’s double scull Lucy Mulcahy and Clodagh Goldring race together for the first time in a Championship event. Because of Covid races with more than 18 entries had to do a time trial with the six fastest to the final. In their heat the girls were second but their time was unfortunately outside of the fastest six. However a great experience with potential for the future.
Junior men’s scull:
In the Junior 18 men’s scull Donnacha Keeley competed on Friday. The weather was horrendous and this affected Donnacha. He won his heat easily beating on of the boys that has been at the World Juniors championships the weekend before. However the other big guns were in the other heats and Donnacha time didn’t make the final. Very disappointed but had two more events to put the disappointment behind him.
Junior men’s quad scull:
Our Junior 18 men’s quad of James Hurley, Robert Keating, Culann Roche and Gerald Nugent have improved a lot sine the return to rowing. The lads raced in the semi final with three through to the final. The lads finished a fairly close fourth and were disappointed not to make the final. The final was one by Athlone which had two of the junior World championship crew from last weekend in their boat.
Men’s club scull:
Donnacha Keeley won his time trial and this time his time was one of the six fastest which earned him a place in the final. In the final the Trinity college sculler P. Morgan-jones won with the St Michaels sculler Foley second with Donnacha third. Foley from St Michaels was also one of the HP Juniors at the Junior World last weekend. Donnacha was happy with his result in this event.
Junior Men’s double scull:
Our last event of the weekend was the Men’s Junior 18 double scull:
Donnacha Keeley and James Hurley competed at Lough Rynn a few weeks back and had won the event their but now that all the High-Performance juniors from the recent world championships were back the competition would be at another level.
As there were many entries the final would be restricted to the fastest 6 boats out of twenty four starts. In their time trial Clonmel finished second. Overall they were third which earned them a place in the final. However they were really tired after the time trial but after seen Daire Lynch win and with some rest and fuelling the lads went back out and in the final replicated their time trial form and came third earning them selves a well deserved Bronze medal, beating off sever other crews that had junior worlds athletes.