Gearóid out of his scull about rowing
That judgment may be a fraction misplaced. But for now Towey is glad to luxuriate in his relative obscurity and concentrate on the task at hand.
Already a World Champion in his own right, Athens may well be Towey's destiny because for the past 10 years, unwittingly or otherwise, Olympic glory has always been on the Fermoy man's agenda.
"Yeah, it was certainly the plan all those years ago when I won the Irish Examiner Youth Sports Star Award to be sitting here several years later and to be on the verge of an Olympic campaign with a realistic hope of a medal.
"I was only ten or eleven when I got into rowing and, even at that stage, it was a dream for me to make it to the top. But it has been a long, learning road, which has certainly not been straight all the way. There's been a lot of hills and valleys in the meantime, although when you're young you never anticipate some of the pitfalls you meet along the way."
There is only one reality for Towey and that involves building a completely intuitive relationship in and out of the boat with Lynch and working with coach Thor Nilsen so that both peak at right time for their mid-August dateline.
Rowing was a natural progression for Towey. The River Blackwater had become a second home for his older siblings, spending hours coaching, training and racing. At the age of eight, Gearóid was part of the posse.
"I'd say that from the very first time I sat in a boat I was hooked straightaway the whole movement of it, the feeling of the boat and the sensation of speed across the water.
"When you're a young fella and you start winning stuff, you're thinking 'Jeez, I'll stay with this.' "My first international regatta came when I was fifteen and realisation struck. You realise that all the other kids out there competing internationally are just the same as you are there's nothing different about them and we were no different from them.
"I quickly realised there was nothing to be afraid of."
His talent shone brightly throughout his early career, but he admits to having been plagued by the demons of low confidence.
"It is a very tough scene and a lot of times I thought about jacking it in, especially when a bit of self-doubt comes into it at the really low times. I remember back in '97 and how I had all these plans to do really well. I was rowing singles and I wanted to go to the world championships and win medals but I fell short of my targets and that was a big blow because it was something I was so focused on.
"But I took stock then and I went to England and it was only really then that I applied myself properly to learning my craft. I have to say that's where I learned my trade properly. I had learned a lot here in Ireland as a kid, but over there I learned everything.
"When I was nineteen I thought I knew it all and I honestly thought there was nothing else I could learn about rowing. I know different now.
"It's funny now, you know, when you do discover something new, it hits you like a sledgehammer because you're thinking: 'how the hell did I not know that before.'
"I lived in London for a year and a half and I was training in the same club as Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent and those guys and I was watching them all the time. I met two of the coaches down there, Martin Kay and his son Tom who had won three World Championship medals, and they were very influential. I dida lot of side-by-side training with Tom and I learned an awful lot from him.
"But I went to London deliberately after the 1997 World Championships because I had seen all these guys in action and I decided to go there for a year and see what happened. I trained like a madman because I knew I had so much to learn. The burning desire was definitely to win an Olympic medal and I'd won the U23 World Championships as a single sculler the year before, but I wanted something different.
"That brought me up to the Olympics in 2000 in Sydney but the results there weren't great, so when I came back I was thinking: 'God, will I continue on or will I jack it now.' He didn't quit, instead he relaxed a little that winter. He didn't take it off entirely, just easy. Then he decided to go to Australia for three months. It was an inspired decision as he won the Australian nationals as a single sculler, a victory that: "was very significant for me in terms of this current Olympiad because I knew I had it in me."
From that moment, April 2001, everything has been geared towards Athens.
"Sam and myself teamed up to focus on the double sculls. We'd been in different boats in 2001/'02 and the guy I'd been rowing with, Tony O'Connor, retired, so Sam and myself joined forces."
It did not go well initially as the pair struggled to gel. But then something suddenly clicked and they were competing right at the highest level. Expectations zoomed.
THE early struggle is not surprising. Image being paired away with a virtual stranger for six weeks, living every single hour in one another's company. Their reading habits are a pointer to their different personas, Lynch being a fan of crime thrillers, while Towey is obsessed with the all-action adventures of Tom Crean and the likes.
Hard, when the daily grind and the sheer exertion leaves you craving even the simplest diversion like a coffee shop.
But that's reality for Towey right now and he's willing to accept it right now as a necessary sacrifice even if it means that every time himself and Lynch go on training camp, each has to bring a sack of books for themselves because there's no cross-pollination on the reading front.
"Hey, but that's the way it happens sometimes," he reflects. "It's the same in rowing itself. Sometimes you can be battling and things are just not going well and you're struggling and that's really frustrating it's hell. Last summer it clicked for Sam and myself on the water and while we were not technically the best out there, we had to make do.
"But when we went to the Worlds and won a bronze medal and we thought 'hey, that wasn't bad' and we felt there was a lot of room for improvement. So we spent all last winter focusing on technique and it is going well so far. We got over the book thing too.
"All you're doing is eating and sleeping and training and sleeping and eating and training. Sometimes you really crave something simple like being able to walk into a bookshop and having a browse around, or going off hill walking, or whatever.
"You crave having choices but you don't have any. It gets lonely, restrictive, but you have to look on it as being a finite period of time and at this stage we're saying to ourselves, 'hey, it's only six more months.'" Towey and Lynch were out in Seville for six weeks before Christmas and then had a stint at altitude in the Sierra Nevada, concentrating on cycling and running. The cycling builds leg stamina while the running helps in the development of lung capacity.
"We have our first competitive race in May in Duisburg in Germany and the week after we've a World Cup event in Munich, followed by another World Cup event in Lucerne and that's that then until the Olympics. We're going to be racing very little before the Olympics, because we don't want to overcook it, but we will be working hard in the meantime."
Opposition in Athens is going to come from the likes of the Italians, who've won the Worlds for the last couple of years, while the Poles, who won the Olympics in 2000, will again be a threat.
The Irish boys thought they had the measure of the Poles at the Worlds last year, but they were in the windy middle of the course and they were in the shelter of the bank and got pipped for second. And don't forget the French, Spanish, Danes, Australians and the Japanese.
"The thing is that at the semi-final stage last year we won, but we were only less than a length away from not qualifying. That's how tight it is."
Interestingly, Towey admits that there is actually very little contact between rowers from the various countries, in or out of competition.
"It is a bit odd, and I don't really know why. Rowers just don't talk very much and I'd say that I don't even know a lot of their names. There is a guy in the French double and he was second to me in the U-23 Worlds and we speak together because we'll always remember that race we had. In the Worlds last year there were a few Australians I knew but there was no talk among us.
"You just look at them and think to yourself: 'in two hours time I'm going to rip your guts out.' "That's the way it is. There is certainly mutual respect because people appreciate how difficult it is to get to major championships, but there's not much chit-chat."
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