Looking back: Family provides a safety net for Irish Olympic rower Fintan McCarthy

The world champion lightweight rower talks about dealing with moving with his family to Skibbereen from London when he was six and how having a solid base of family support helped him as an athlete

Fintan McCarthy: 'Rowing gave me a sense of purpose. It became my thing and helped me believe it was OK to be myself.'  Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

THE lightweight rower Fintan McCarthy is a world champion and double Olympic gold medallist. 

Aged 29, he is currently preparing for the World Rowing Championships in the Netherlands in August. He tells the Irish Examiner how the relationships and experiences he had in childhood made him the sportsman he is today.

His earliest memory is of his sister, Caitlin, being born. “My twin brother, Jake, and I were five and I remember us walking into the hospital,” he says. “We’d bought Mam flowers and had been fighting over the choice of ribbon. I’d wanted lilac. He’d wanted red. Dad got both.”

The feeling he most associates with that memory is safety. “My sister was born shortly before Christmas and thinking back to meeting her that first time and the days afterwards, when family came to visit, gives me such a sense of connection, togetherness, and my place in the family dynamic,” says McCarthy. “It makes me feel good.”

He believes he was prone to fixations as a child. Whatever he was into, he was “100% into it: If I liked a book, I’d read all the books in the series.

Fintan McCarthy and his twin brother Jake playing as children in 1999. 'I think we both tried to establish our own identities by doing different things.'

“If I became interested in something like the Egyptians, I’d have to find out all about it.”

Surprisingly, sport wasn’t one of his fixations. Jake was the sporty one.

“He went in a sporty direction, playing football and soccer, and I was the studious one,” says McCarthy. “I think we both tried to establish our own identities by doing different things.”

It was the community that Jake found in sports that made Fintan take more of an interest in his teenage years. “My days revolved around school and studying,” he says. “But Jake had relationships outside of school and family through sport. I wanted some of that.”

So, he joined the local rowing club at the age of 15 and loved it. Looking back, he says, it was “a lot like studying: The harder you worked, the better your results. I appreciated that and was soon rowing before and after school most days.”

It wasn’t long before Jake started rowing with him and McCarthy now regards that time they spent together as a great bonding experience. “Jake had always been streets ahead of me in other sports and there’s no fun in studying together, is there?” he laughs. “Rowing was something we could enjoy together.”

Moving to Skibbereen

Rowing also helped McCarthy establish a firmer sense of identity. He had struggled slightly after his family moved to Skibbereen from London when he was six.

His father, Tom, is from the West Cork town and the family had spent holidays there and had always felt Irish when they were in London.

But when they moved home, McCarthy felt different. He says: “I stood out when all I wanted to do was fit in.”

That feeling would resurface occasionally, especially in his teenage years. 

McCarthy says: “It’s so important to have a solid group of friends when you’re that age and I found my people eventually. 

"But there were times I felt like I didn’t fit in, particularly as I didn’t play sports.

“Rowing gave me a sense of purpose. It became my thing and helped me believe it was OK to be myself. 

"Before that, I’d always tried to figure out what other people were doing, so I could fit in around them. I started to flourish when I found rowing and it became easier to make friends.”

Family bonds

McCarthy always knew he had solid relationships within his own family. He recalls spending hours on the PlayStation with Jake and occasionally giving Caitlin a control, “so she could pretend she was playing”.

The five years between Caitlin and her brothers made a big difference when they were younger, but the siblings found common ground in their family pets. They had cats and dogs and would all look after and play with them.

Dad Tom is a music producer who taught his children the importance of determination. He taught them all to read and “had us learning our times tables before we ever went to school and would often have us running laps of the garden”, McCarthy says.

“I think he wanted us to know we could do anything if we worked hard at it.”

Their mother Sue’s response to a breast cancer diagnosis a few years after the family moved to Ireland taught him another lesson: Taking on each day and its challenges as best you can.

“The resilience she showed then still inspires me,” he says.

The relationship McCarthy had with his parents when he was a child was supportive and remains so today. “They’ve always been there for me, whether it’s at the finish line of a race or in other ways,” he says. “What’s changed, as I’ve got older, is that I now ask for and listen to their advice.”

Fintan McCarthy and friends in the National Rowing Centre in 2013. 'It’s so important to have a solid group of friends.'

McCarthy moved out of home when he was 18, studying physiology at University College Cork, so he could be close to the National Rowing Centre.

“Cork City isn’t far from Skibbereen and I returned home most weekends, so it didn’t feel like a huge change,” he says. “I also lived with Jake, so I carried a little bit of home and family with me.”

He ends our conversation by circling back to the theme of safety.

Just as he felt safe on the day his baby sister was born, McCarthy also experienced a sense of safety in “staying close to home".

"I could focus on managing my studying and training, while also cooking my own food and everything else that’s involved in being a student, while knowing I had a safety net that would catch me if anything went wrong. I think having that solid base of family support nearby helped me as an athlete.”