Antonio Maurogiovanni: 'Recharge the batteries and onto the World Championships. My job is to give'

Ireland’s rowing coach Antonio Maurogiovanni

Barely an hour had passed at the French national rowing centre here east of Paris, but the world was already moving on. The crowds that had packed stands exposed for hours to the beating sun had made for the shade of the train station at Torcy. Most would re-emerge into the light and the maw of the capital and a ceaseless Olympics.

Antonio Maurogiovanni was moving on too. Rowing Ireland’s high-performance boss was more than happy to stand and chat and take stock of the regatta just gone, but there is no time to lose. We talk about Olympic cycles like they are separate entities. The reality is that they merge and cross over like a magician’s linking rings.

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The World Championships, an event for non-Olympic crews at senior level, and for U23s and u19s, starts in just two weeks. Paul O’Donovan has intimated that he will be there and Maurogiovanni is already talking about getting back to Cork and knocking heads with pathway coordinators and coaches.

“I need to support the coaches who are in Cork with the young teams,” he said. "This is the Los Angeles team we are training for the World Championships, which will be held in a couple of weeks’ time. I have to charge my battery in 24 hours and then, bang, go there. Our job is to give.” 

Like O’Donovan, McCarthy has all but thrown his hat into the ring for the heavyweight ranks now that lightweight rowing has ceased to be an Olympic event. It’s an enormous ask, even of two such phenomenal athletes, especially having seen the sheer size of some of the specimens in those ranks up close.

The weight limit at lightweight for men was 70kg. Lars Hartig, a German lightweight rower who won World and European medals in the class in and around a decade ago, made the transition up at one point and said he had put on 16kgs in the process. It’s a completely different ball game.

Ireland's gold medal duo celebrate in Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium

“It is always going to be a big challenge but someone like Paul, someone like Fintan, you know, lightweight that win the gold, when they win the gold, usually they can be in the final of a heavy, an open event. So that is the starting point,” said Maurogiovanni.

“Now we will see the way in which they put more weight, it becomes stronger. So it all needs to be done to the plan. So it's not impossible. We have here [in Paris] a single from a lightweight … from Belgium. Now, he's in the final of the men's single. That means it's possible.” 

The Italian has long kickstarted the process of Ireland’s shift away from its traditional light base towards the heavier masses. The medal won by the women’s four in Tokyo, and by Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch in the double sculls here on Thursday were breakthrough successes in that process.

Maurogiovanni had been a leading voice in the chorus that called for Lynch to drop a burgeoning career in New York and return home to pursue a path to Paris. And he was equally lavish in his praise for how Doyle juggled his medical duties with the water.

“These two guys put together and they create magic. It’s outstanding. That medal means a lot. A heavy men’s medal was never done before, never achieved before. We created a lot of, let’s say, snowball effect so people would believe it possible.” Scan the medal tables from Toko and Paris and the Irish rowing team showed no progress. Both produced one bronze and one gold. That’s deceiving. The team qualified their most boats ever in 2024 (seven) and all finished in the top ten. And the four A finals achieved was another record.

At the apex of it all, as was the case three years ago in Japan, was a pair of men from Skibbereen who retained an Olympic title for Ireland for only the second time, Pat O’Callaghan having achieved it in 1932 in the hammer throw.

“Outstanding, exceptional. Only someone excellent can do something like that. Paul mainly considering his parallel career as a doctor, so he's not student.

Ireland's Fintan McCarthy and Paul O'Donovan in action

“To find the time and find the discipline to look after his parallel career and, at the same time train with Fintan so well, so hard and so consistently and achieve what he has achieved, is just outstanding.” If they aren’t going anywhere yet then Maurogiovanni’s future is less certain. He has been seven months at this gig now and said before that he would look at how things sit with him and his employer after these Olympic Games.

That’s still the case. There has, he said, been no talks about that yet. Either way, he is eager to see the work continue. Developing coaches was a cornerstone to his ambitions when he took over seven years ago. Continuing that will decide the future of the Irish rowing programme as it adapts to the changing waters.

“I am begging Rowing Ireland, I am begging Sport Ireland, to make sure that they keep that in mind. At the end of the day, athletes are everywhere in the world. But [it is] the coaches and the structures behind the coaches that create the environment and momentum that make these crews a success.”