No short cuts: The skill and finesse needed to ‘pull like a dog’

To watch boats glide along the surface at regattas is to be disabused of the agony raging within. 

WORK DONE: Aoife Casey and Margaret Cremen after their lightweight double sculls semi-final. Pic: Morgan Treacy, Inpho

THE pat phrase goes that there are no guarantees in sport. Not in rowing. A little over 500 men and women will sit perched on the start line at the Vaires-sur-Marne on the eastern outskirts of Paris during the 2024 Olympics and every one of them will take it for granted that pain lurks in the waters.

There’s no sure way of calculating which sport is the most testing.