Starting the conversation: Mags Cremen on food, body image and relationship with rowing
AWARD: Margaret Cremen, rowing, overrall winner at the UCC Sports stars awards for 2024/25. Pic: Eddie O'Hare
THIS Friday afternoon represents her final inter-varsity outing for UCC. Last Friday saw her final-year project submitted. Her final Sports Studies exam is less than a month away.
Mags Cremen’s UCC goodbye has clear water to the finish line. A goodbye to get right. A seven-year chapter of internal struggles and personal growth.
It was during her early days at UCC where she fell out of the boat and out of love with rowing. It was at UCC where she regained control and climbed back in.
In the corner of the Mardyke Arena we have commandeered, Mags goes right back to the opening page. Her story she’s now happy to share.
Her story is being told so nothing is kept hidden. She wants out in the open the conversation around eating habits and body image so pertinent to lightweight rowers. A conversation pertinent to all sportspeople who must make weight in order to compete.
Her story is being told so those coming after know the journey was not easy. Being useful with an oar in either hand doesn’t exempt you from the challenges of life.
AFTER Paris came change. She segued into a new college course. She moved into a new weight class. Lightweight rowing is no longer on the Olympic menu. If she wanted to plot a course to LA and chase improvement on the fifth-place finish achieved by herself and Aoife Casey in the French capital, she would have to do so as a heavyweight.
After Paris, she knew the change she didn’t want. She wasn’t ready to come off the water. Among the rowing community is where the 26-year-old is happiest. These are her people.
The heavyweight class she views as a “new lease of life”. She can fuel more than ever and not have to fixate about numbers on a scale. Having free will with food has been embraced and is being enjoyed.
Her relationship with food didn’t always enjoy such rude health. Her relationship with the scales wasn’t always so comfortable.
In junior rowing, there are no weight classes. It’s an open field. Despite her late arrival onto the water, Mags was a junior talent. She and Aoife Casey won European silver in 2017. But medals and podiums were no preparation for the step up to senior the following year. Instead of medals and podiums, she became dominated by the 57kg lightweight requirement.
“After 18, you are either lightweight or heavyweight. I didn't know how to be a lightweight. How am I supposed to lose weight, that kind of thing? I developed an unhealthy relationship with food and unhealthy habits that way. Just a lot of stress in not really knowing what I am doing,” she begins.
The 57kg requirement is for race days alone. The living weight of a rower typically sits north of what they must hit in the hours before heading down to the starting pontoon.
Cremen started to obsess over the 57kg requirement months away from competition. Her attitude was the lighter, the better. She took as victory each time the needle was at or below the magic number.
Such an attitude, of course, runs counter to the demands that rowers ask of their body every single day. The calories burned through by their savage training regime dictates constant pulling in at the petrol pump and refilling of the tank.
The still teenage Cremen began to bypass the filling station. She began to bypass meals. She began to struggle with body image. What she was and wasn’t consuming became all-consuming.
“Just constantly thinking about it. And you are not immersing yourself then, you are not going for lunches and not going out for dinners. Just being super conscious of it all the time. I definitely wouldn't wish it upon anyone.
“If I was 57kg, or below 57kg, I’d think that was a success. It was probably the competitive side of me as well. It was a win being light. Definitely not a good space to be in.
“In the winter now, I'd be 61kg or 62kg. And you'd need to be. But in the early years of being a lightweight, I'd have wanted to be light during the winter, whereas when I got more mature, I realised I don't want to be injured, I need to put on a bit of weight.
“I went to my first World Cup in 2018. Went to World U23s the same summer, so I did have experience as a lightweight, but I think that made me a bit more anxious, being like, I need to be light. I didn't really know where I stood then in September 2018 coming here to UCC, and I guess that took away from my confidence a bit in college too, going to lectures and stuff like that.
“I was just extremely burned out by the time I got to UCC. I did have a tough first year here. I did fall out of love with rowing. I put too much pressure on myself and expected too much of myself.”
2019 was Tokyo Games qualifying year. Cremen was to be part of the push to qualify a boat in the lightweight double sculls. Until she wasn’t. She made a decision that far surpassed her then teenage status.
She stepped back from the high-performance set-up. Handed back the green singlet. Pressed an indefinite pause on representing her country and the Olympic dream. Each step taken in an effort to release the self-inflicted pressure she’d been trapped under since entering senior waters.
For 2019, the Rochestown native was exclusively a club rower. And she loved every second of it. All that fills her pages thereafter can be traced back to 2019. Qualification for Tokyo, World bronze in 2022, European individual silver in 2024, and an Olympic final that same summer would not have happened but for 2019.
Rowing, for that restorative year, held no truck with fast times or making weight. It was about heading up the country to an inter-varsity event in the middle of nowhere. It was staying up all night with teammates chatting and gossiping and laughing. Enjoyment re-entered her picture.
All of the eight she won a national championship alongside that 2019 summer were in Paris five years later to roar her down the Marne River.
“I would say to them all the time that they are the reason I kept going in terms of rowing for Ireland. It had just got to a point where I was like, I don't know am I enjoying this anymore. I decided to row just with UCC. And I had the best year of my life. Definitely made me fall in love with rowing again.
“Rowing with the girls at UCC, there’d be training sessions on the erg that I couldn't finish. They'd be like, just finish it. No one cared what times you did because everyone was at different levels. They were like, you don't have to have this superstar score, just get it done. It was so nice for someone to say that to me. It was just about getting it done and doing it for each other, and not thinking it’s the end of the world. That took time to adjust to.”
There was learning in the adjusting. There was growth amid the turbulence. So much so that she’d not trade a single iota of the distress that forced her to step back from the international stage and suspend Olympic ambitions. She needed to reach the conclusion that to deny her body the requisite amounts of fuel was to deny herself the opportunity to succeed.
“I wouldn't change anything because I don't think I would have got to where I am if I hadn't had those struggles,” she continues.
“It's not that I am looking at lightweight rowing as a negative thing. Rowing actually helped me because I had that revelation that I need to fuel my body if I want to be strong and win. I can't train hard if I'm not eating properly. Why would I hold myself back by under-fueling?”
She returned to the National Rowing Centre out the road in Farran full of beans for the 2019/20 season. She returned with a healthier mindset. That is not to say there weren’t future triggers. Old and unhealthy habits did not go quietly.
She remembers looking at a photo that captured her stamping of a ticket to the 2021 Olympics at the last qualifying regatta in Lucerne. Her first thought was that she looked “a bit heavy” in the photo and how it wasn’t a great angle of her. She immediately told herself to cop on. This was a photo of her securing five-ring membership. Who cares how flattering or otherwise the angle was.
To get to there was a journey. A journey that is no use kept to herself.
“Being part of the lightweight team, we always kept the conversation open. We helped each other out and gave each other an awful lot of advice. It was a very non-judgmental space.
“I would love to have those conversations with the younger girls that are aspiring to be lightweight. I actually met a girl recently that is hoping to be a lightweight rower and who was looking for advice, and that's what we want, we want the conversation to be open.
“I said to her, 'we don't want anyone to feel like they are alone'. We are not superheroes, we don't want people thinking it was easy for us because it wasn't. That’s what I want people to know because people don't see behind the scenes.”
Cremen was the fastest female at the recent Irish trials. There’s Europeans in May, Worlds mid-September. And while her forever rowing sister Aoife Casey has also moved up to heavyweight, Cremen has no idea what boat any of them will sit into this summer. Single, double, quad, four; the coaches will have final say.
Irrespective of the boat, the words of her underage coach, Dan Buckley, continue to ring. The harder you work, the luckier you’ll get. It was around 2013 when her dad, Declan, and late mum, Annette, first brought her to Lee Rowing Club. Rowing was not the hot commodity it is today. Cremen, in perfect Cork tongue, was “allergic” to joining. Flat out refused to leave the car the first evening down the Marina. Eventually, she got out and quickly never wanted to leave.
“The joy that rowing brings my dad, I am so honoured I give that to him,” she says. “My dad's brother, Kieran, passed away three weeks after Paris. My dad is one of seven and they were all in Paris. My uncle was extremely sick, but he still came out to watch. His son, daughter, and wife were there. After [he passed], Paris meant even more to them.
“I know my dad is so proud of me. I love him being part of it. He comes to all the regattas. I'm never like, 'g’way'! I definitely owe that to my parents for forcing me into rowing. If I didn't do rowing, where would I be? I honestly don't know.”
She’s smarter and stronger for having rowing. Rowing is a more informed space for having her.
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