Ireland’s eight crews at the 2020 European Rowing U23 Championships in Duisburg won 5 medals over the weekend – 2 gold, 1 silver, and 2 bronze.
Lydia Heaphy and Cliodhna Nolan secured a Gold Medal in the A Final of the BLW2- as they held off competition from Germany and Italy to secure gold.
The BM2x Crew of Ronan Byrne and Daire Lynch won their A Final, beating the Belarus boat for gold, by 3.93 seconds.
The BLW2x– crew of Margaret Cremen and Aoife Casey took silver in the A Final, remaining ahead of Germany (bronze) from the beginning, finishing with a time difference of 6.78 seconds.
The BM4+ crew of Alex Byrne, Ross Corrigan, Jack Dorney, John Kearney and Leah O’Regan were 3rd in the A Final, taking home the bronze medal. There was only .64 of a second between second and third.
The BW2– crew of Tara Hanlon and Emily Hegarty also finished 3rd in their A Final, beating out Czech Republic (4th) by 3.35 seconds. Ireland finished behind the Romanian and Greek crews in gold and silver positions respectively.
Rowing Ireland’s High-Performance Director, Antonio Maurogiovanni said of the weekend’s successes:
“We are delighted with the results from our crews at the 2020 European Rowing U23 Championships. Winning two Gold, one Silver and two Bronze medals is an excellent result for Irish Rowing this weekend. We entered eight crews, and all of our athletes represented Ireland proudly throughout the weekend. We had seven crews progress to the A Final in their categories, and this is a testament to the effort that was put in during training in the National Rowing Centre by the athletes over the last few weeks.”
Other Irish results:
BW1X- Claire Feerick: fourth in the A Final with a time of 08:00.86
BLM4X- Hugh Sutton, Hugh Moore, Eoin Gaffney, and Will Ronayne: fifth in the A Final with a time of 06:13.31
BLM1x- Samuel O’Neill: second in the C Final with a time of 07:27.25
