There are 55 categories on show at the Championships with 503 crews entered for the weekend across all of them.

Our High-Performance athletes will be representing their clubs across several categories with senior and under 23 high-performance athletes competing throughout the weekend.

Fresh off their incredibly impressive gold medal victory in the Lightweight Men’s Double Sculls, both Fintan McCarthy (Skibbereen Rowing Club) and Paul O’Donovan (UCC Rowing Club) will compete in multiple senior events as they look to add to an outstanding 2021.

Rio 2016 silver medalist Gary O’Donovan (Skibbereen Rowing Club) will also compete with Daire Lynch (Clonmel Rowing Club) and Ronan Byrne (UCC Rowing Club), of the Men’s Double Sculls crew from Tokyo, rounding out the men’s high-performance athletes currently confirmed for the Championships.

On the women’s high-performance front, two of Ireland’s bronze medal-winning Women’s Four crew have been announced, with Emily Hegarty (UCC Rowing Club) and Aifric Keogh (UCC Rowing Club) set to compete.

Aoife Casey (UCC Rowing Club) and Margaret Cremen (UCC Rowing Club), who raced together in the Lightweight Women’s Double Sculls in Tokyo, will both feature in a number of senior events, with Monika Dukarska (Killorglin Rowing Club) of the Women’s Pair Olympic crew also set to set to race at the NRC.

Tara Hanlon (UCC Rowing Club) and Lydia Heaphy (UCC Rowing Club) round out a stacked line-up of high-performance athletes set to compete in Cork.

Some of our other High-Performance athletes will also be representing their clubs at the Irish Rowing Championships: Claire Feerick (Neptune Rowing Club), Jake McCarthy (Skibbereen Rowing Club), Cliodhna Nolan (NUIG), Alex Byrne (UCC RC), John Kearney (UCC RC), Ross Corrigan (QUBBC), Jack Dorney (Shandon), Hugh Moore (QUBBC), Finn O’Reilly (Skibbereen RC), and Leah O’Regan (Shandon).

Rowing Ireland’s Chief Executive Officer, Michelle Carpenter said, “After such remarkable Olympics games from our team, I am delighted to see so many set to compete amongst a very impressive line-up at the Irish Rowing Championships 2021.

“Our high-performance athletes have shown that they are some of the best in the world and it will be wonderful to see so many showcases their talents once again at the Kinetica National Rowing Centre. In addition, we have crews from our clubs and grassroots around the country coming to our home of Irish rowing.

“I am looking forward to what’s set to be a really exciting event”

Senior High-Performance Athletes Competing

• Fintan McCarthy (Skibbereen Rowing Club)
• Paul O’Donovan (UCC Rowing Club)
• Emily Hegarty (UCC Rowing Club)
• Aifric Keogh (UCC Rowing Club)
• Gary O’Donovan (Skibbereen Rowing Club)
• Jake McCarthy (Skibbereen Rowing Club)
• Monika Dukarska (Killorglin Rowing Club)
• Ronan Byrne (UCC Rowing Club)
• Tara Hanlon (UCC Rowing Club)
• Daire Lynch (Clonmel Rowing Club)
• Gary O’Donovan (Skibbereen Rowing Club)
• Jake McCarthy (Skibbereen Rowing Club)

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The quartet – Aifric Keogh, Eimear Lambe, Emily Hegarty and Fiona Murtagh – took bronze after a slow start to the final and doubled the amount of Irish female Olympic medalists as a result, becoming the first women to win an Olympic rowing medal for Team Ireland.

The four women are proud of their achievements in Tokyo and are humbled by the statistics that have sprouted from their bronze medal finish.

“You don’t even realise [what you’ve achieved] until after and I think it’s a really proud moment for us,” Keogh said.

“When we see those things written down it’s like a shock almost and we’re really proud of it.”

The crew are far more spaced out than the gold medalist double sculls duo of Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy.

Murtagh and Keogh returned to Galway as the first Olympic medalists from the county while Lambe comes from Dublin and Hegarty hails from Skibbereen, like the men’s duo.

Murtagh stated that downtime is needed after an intensive few months for the four women.

The 25-year-old said: “Oh, I definitely want to take a bit of time off! It’s been a long preparation and we’ve all worked really hard, so we definitely deserve a break to spend time with family and friends. It’s been so long since we’ve seen anyone.”

Their intensive training in the build-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games has seen them form a bubble with each other.

The quartet has rarely mixed outside of their own training group since their training began 13 months before their successful Olympic campaign due to Covid-19.

They are all excited to burst that bubble and see their loved ones after being focused on the Olympics for so long.

Outside Christmas, we probably haven’t seen our families except [for] the odd weekend here or there.

“There were times when we needed time away from the group, but we knew the smart thing was to keep the group as safe as possible and stay within the bubble.”

As Murtagh described it: “We have our own different journeys to go on.”

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The pair won the Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls on Thursday morning, pulling past the Germans in the second half of the race after their main opposition got off to a strong start.

The win and gold medal rounded up a dominant Olympic campaign for the duo, who came first in all three of their races in the event.

Paul’s latest medal adds to the silver he won with brother Gary at Rio in 2016 as part of Team Ireland and several world championship gold medals.

Paul has not felt that the medal is too different from the others he has picked up throughout his career.

“We are always trying to be the best we can be,” he said.

“We’d be sitting down with Dominic [Casey] and planning out training, and we are constantly adjusting stuff. Then to go out and do the test gives a nice confirmation that you’ve done a good job and are on the right track.”

Casey coached the pair at the Games and added to the Skibbereen connection the rowers have.

The coach, who also oversaw the silver medal in Rio, is a member of the club O’Donovan and McCarthy both hail from – Skibbereen Rowing Club.

The duo feels that the hard work that is put in behind-the-scenes is what has helped them succeed, adding that there is no special quality that sets them apart from the rest.

The down-to-earth confidence that the pair have is also visible in Casey’s approach to the sport, with O’Donovan noting that their coach’s main concern after the gold medal race was “getting the boat to rig.”

McCarthy was one of many who watched his clubmates win the silver medal five years ago and is starting to come to terms with his rise to prominence since then.

“It definitely helped me to get to where I am today because that I saw that it was possible,” said McCarthy.

“It gave me a lot of motivation just to keep going with it. We were doing similar enough training, we had the same coach, so it was pretty clear that it was a winning formula.

“We don’t get many opportunities to race, most of what we do is training so you really need to enjoy the training, enjoy the journey.”

However, now is a time for the journey to be paused momentarily, to relax and recover from their long period of Olympic preparation.

The duo returned home to Skibbereen as world champions and have plans that don’t include rowing on their mind for now.

O’Donovan will return to his studies at UCC where he is taking a degree in medicine.

The two-time Olympic medalist said that he believes the mic of rowing and college can help his longevity.

“I’d be looking forward to getting back to college life. A couple of months at this stage to catch up with all of the lads again.

“Too much of the rowing…I just get too consumed in it. It’s good for me to take a break.”

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