Murtagh embracing everything from Olympics to Disneyland as big year looms

Fiona Murtagh and Aifric Keogh hold just one oar each and anything shy of perfect synchronicity is felt far more than in a larger boat.

OLYMPIC YEAR: Team Ireland rowers Fiona Murtagh, left, and Aifric Keogh during a Team Ireland rowing training camp at Vaires Sur Marne in Paris, France. The Nautical Stadium at Vaires-sur-Marne will host the Olympic and Paralympic rowing and canoe-kayak events at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

It’s 23 degrees in Sabaudia this week and Fiona Murtagh’s sunny disposition is a perfect match for the weather and the scenic surrounds found on a stretch of Italian coastline found midway between Rome and Naples.

The 2020 Olympic bronze medallist is part of a Rowing Ireland group on site for a two-week training camp. The hotel is right on the beach so the strains of every tough training sessions can be washed away with a dip in the ocean.

“You would almost forget about the fact that you’re professionals,” she laughed.

This Mediterranean camp is the second leg of a trip that landed them in Paris over the weekend. Vaires-Sur-Marnes, to be exact. That’s the rowing venue for next year’s Olympic Games and it sits about an hour east of the Eiffel Tower.

The Irish contingent shared the experience with crews from New Zealand and Switzerland. They stayed in the hotel that will be home next summer, tried out the course and its distinctive cross-wind, and took the chance to let off some steam.

Tickets were secured to the Rugby World Cup semi-final between the All Blacks and Argentina on the Friday night and they made the short hop to Disneyland the following day where the roller coasters were the star attraction.

“We were all like big kids.” Those present were all athletes who had secured Ireland no less than six boats – not their own places - at next year’s Olympics with a string of superb performances at the 2023 World Championships in Belgrade back in September.

Murtagh booked Ireland’s slot in the women’s pairs alongside Aifric Keogh, a fellow Galway woman and another member of the fours crew that secured that brilliant and unexpected podium place in Tokyo just over two years ago.

An internal competition to be held in March will decide if that duo gets to profit from the fruit of their labours in Serbia come the Games in 2024 but the prospect of having to do just that doesn’t seem to faze Murtagh.

“This is protocol, this is how we do things and get on with it. It is different compared to Tokyo where we went in the last-chance regatta in the four and at the last-chance regatta you qualify as people. This was my first World championships to qualify a boat.” 

That she isn’t still operating in that four-strong crew alongside Keogh, Eimear Lambe and Emily Hegarty still takes people by surprise. When tickets went on sale last year, some opted automatically for the day the fours will be on.

The pairs was not on anyone’s agenda for Murtagh then but this mixing and matching of crews and boats is nothing unusual in rowing circles. What is rare is the manner in which Murtagh and Keogh clicked. That was little short of astonishing.

There were no plans to pitch them together in the pair until the last training camp before Belgrade where they were randomly selected to train together. This happens all the time but the performances they delivered demanded attention.

“It just clicked. Aifric is an amazing athlete. I’m very fortunate to train alongside her and it was easy to slot in because we had been training alongside each other for a few years by that stage anyway.” 

All of this leads to the assumption that they can be even better. They eventually finished fourth in Belgrade, over four seconds adrift of the podium, but plans are already afoot to use that regatta as a launch pad for the nine months ahead.

Qualifying so early for Paris brings all sorts of advantages. The pair is a sensitive operation at the best of times. Murtagh and Keogh hold just one oar each and anything shy of perfect synchronicity is felt far more than in a larger boat.

A big year lies ahead. Sabaudia will be revisited at least three times before the European Championship next April, by which time those internal trials will be a ripple to the rear. For now Murtagh is entitled to look ahead with confidence.

“In the Worlds we were learning each race. We reviewed it then and that performance is the template for what we need to improve on. We know we’ve got a very finite number of months to the Games.”