Clock is ticking for Irish rowing's Big Brother moment
SACRIFICES: Fiona Murtagh and Aifric Keogh. Picture: ©INPHO/Ben Brady
Sport has colonised vast chunks of the TV schedule beyond its own borders. Think about it, what is reality television, or dance-offs and bake-offs, if not content packaged in a knockout format familiar to anyone who ever watched the FA Cup?
Love Island even had a podium.
If that nonsense isnât anything like the real thing, then there is an element of Big Brother social experiment about the ongoing rowing trials to figure out who among Irelandâs talented circle of elite candidates make it into the boats destined for Paris this summer.
Six boats were qualified for the Olympics via last Septemberâs World Championships but not yet their crews. That's TBC for now. Itâs unlikely Paul OâDonovan is kept up at night fretting about his place, but there is enough intrigue elsewhere to keep us tuning in.
Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh won bronze medals with the womenâs four in Tokyo in 2021 but qualified the pair in Serbia last autumn. As things stand, they donât know if they will continue on that path or be diverted back to the quartet.
Internal trials have been ongoing since the start of the year. The last is due some time in the next ten days, depending on when the weather gods shine on the rowing centre in Cork, and until then itâs anyoneâs guess as to who gets what nod.
âItâs not locked in,â said Keogh. âFiona and I can be in any combination, the four or the pair or whatever it might be. Whatever the coaches think should be tested will be tested, so who knows what will come out the other side?â
Keogh and Murtagh are just back from another two-week training bloc in Italy with the rest of the heavyweight crews. Two weeks spent in the same hotels, eating at the same tables and walking 200m each morning to the same boats.
Conversations inevitably turn to who is performing well with whom, or which of them has put up the big numbers on a given day or week. Ireland has a big high-performance unit across male and female, lightweight and heavies. Permutations aplenty.
Word is that Murtagh and Keogh, who came together by chance last summer and promptly finished fourth at the Worlds, are turning some heads this last few months, but the priority for everyone is to make it into the fastest boat, whatever that may be.
The pair is that bit more attractive for now given that boat is booked for Paris. The four isnât. The only way that will change is if that crew, whatever its constituent parts, finishes top two in the Lucerne Regatta in May. And thereâs no guarantees there, obviously.
Theyâve all made sacrifices to make it this far.
Keogh was betwixt and between about continuing on after Tokyo and there was a 12-month period there between 2022 and last year that she spent recovering from injury and studying in Dublin but sheâs all-in now at this stage. Everyone is.
Some of those who qualified boats for the 2024 Games were brought to the venue at Vaires-sur-Marnes a few months back and there have already been too many people asking about what boat she will be in so that they can plan their trips accordingly.
All of that brings an inevitable sense of excitement and, at the same time, an edginess given it's still over four months away and there is that small matter of booking her own place in a boat that will bring her to the starting line come mid-summer.
âIt is a funny kind of balance. Sometimes you hear a sentence come out of your mouth about Paris and you have to pop it back in and touch wood, cross your fingers, all that stuff. There is a bit of that where you are getting excited the clock is ticking, it is getting close.âÂ
Keogh has no notion what the next trials will be. They might add up to one race or ten. When it's done, the expectation is that the womenâs heavyweights will be called together into the one room and their fate revealed. Very Big Brother, just without the cameras.
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