McCarthy: Rare loss 'threw me' after four golden years with O'Donovan

Ireland's golden duo know that the last Worlds of an Olympic cycle are the toughest event outside only the Games themselves

READY TO ROW: Fintan McCarthy poses for a portrait during a Rowing Ireland media day at the National Rowing Centre in Farran Woods, Cork. Pic Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

They’ve been the rock on which all others have perished time and again but Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy take to the waters at the World Rowing Championships in Serbia in the coming week after coming aground themselves earlier this summer.

The Skibbereen crew had traversed four years unbeaten in the men’s lightweight double sculls before their run was interrupted at World Cup II in Lucerne in July when the French crew of Hugo Beurey and Ferdinand Ludwig had 0.09 seconds to spare on them then.

That's the blink of an eye, basically.

The import of that result was apparent after in the adrenalized words and in the body language of the Frenchmen who had finished a distant sixth and almost 12 seconds adrift of their Irish counterparts at the 2022 Worlds in the Czech Republic.

Beurey and Ludwig front up in Belgrade as reigning European champions too, but it bears reminding that O’Donovan didn’t feature then as he continued to concentrate on his medical studies in the wake of the gold medal earned with McCarthy in Tokyo in 2021.

The latter, with temporary partner Hugo Moore, could only finish sixth at those Euros but it is that rare loss in Switzerland, when O’Donovan wasn’t long returned, that lingers in the mind as McCarthy contemplates this latest test of their resolve and dominance.

“Yeah, I would say immediately afterwards I was a little bit thrown,” he admits. “I literally didn’t know what to do but when you process it the margin was so small and there are a lot of things that you could say might have affected you.

“But at the end of the day we have won races with less preparation before and going into it we were in good form, we had a really good heat, so it has actually been a good exercise for us to have a look at how we rowed that weekend and what we did in between races.” His point about previous separations is well made and demonstrates a determination not to be tricked into any feelings of complacency: they went a year between the Tokyo Games and the Europeans last year without a run and still won gold at the latter.

Either way, other crews know now that the Irish boys can and have been beaten.

O’Donovan’s return to the previously all-conquering lightweight double sculls boat isn’t the only change to the wider team since a European Championship which, for the first time since 2015, failed to produce a single medal for the Irish contingent.

Jack Dorney, Adam Murphy, Jake McCarthy and Alison Bergin all come in and there are a number of what we would term ‘positional changes’ were this a GAA roster as high-performance director Antonio Maurogiovanni tries to maximise resources.

Three of the boats remain unchanged but among the tweaks is the switch from the women’s four to the women’s pair of Fiona Murtagh and Aifric Keogh, two of the quartet that won Olympic bronze in the first of those classes two years ago.

So many factors enter the thoughts of the coaches as they strive to come up with the best balance and the best boats. Dorney comes in to the men's four after being unavailable due to studies in the States earlier in the year. Keogh spent a full winter and more impaired by injuries.

Finding the right combination of bodies in different classes of boat can and does require constant tinkering, both in training and in races, and what works one season may not be the optimum choice for another. It is as much art as science.

Maurogiovanni explained this year's Europeans disappointment in the context of a team trying out a number of new combinations and off the back of a post-Tokyo pause when so many pursued other interests and it’s not like they were miles off the pace with two fourths and seven of the ten crews making the ‘A’ finals.

Belgrade is an undoubted step up in class.

The last Worlds of an Olympic cycle are accepted as the toughest event outside only the Games themselves. Every top nation is committed and a thousand athletes from 74 countries will be chasing podiums and qualifying places for Paris 2024.

Ireland will be looking to book tickets for anything up to four boats at the Ada Ciganlija Regatta on Belgrade’s city centre Sava Lake. The top eleven makes it from some classes, in others it is the first seven. Those falling short will have to wait for Lucerne next summer for the next window to open.