'Everyone's experience is different': Paul O'Donovan on rowing controversy

Paul O Donovan at the launch of the National Dairy Council's High-Performance Breakfast.

Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy are their own men but they are linked in the public consciousness through their combined efforts in amassing Olympic, World and European rowing medals for Ireland.

It’s just three weeks since McCarthy tiptoed gingerly around the scandal that has gripped Irish rowing since the publication of Paul Kimmage’s articles in the Sunday Independent over a toxic culture in the sport’s high-performance system.

McCarthy described the period around those articles and what followed as the “hardest few months” of his career, spoke of the changes already implemented in the programme, and put it that everyone has their own voice and perspective.

And O’Donovan?

“Everyone's experience is different,” he said. “Fintan has made mention of his. I've been basically, for the last two years anyway, not at the training centre at all and even before that, even in the lead up to Paris [Olympics in 2024], most of my years … was spent kind of training on my own.

“So I didn't have the same experience that other people had and I suppose Fintan has had the weight of being the athlete's representative as well during that period, that goes with it.”

Kimmage’s investigation began with an email he received in 2023 from the mother of Paul and Gary O’Donovan – who won a silver medal together at the 2016 Olympics – about her concerns over Gary’s experiences in the programme.

That subsequently led to interviews with others about athlete welfare issues, including two-time World and two-time European champion Sanita Puspure, Ronan Byrne, Natalie Long and Monika Dukarska.

That publicity in turn led to Rowing Ireland and Sport Ireland being called to appear before an Oireachtas committee in January, and to calls for an independent regulator to help safeguard the welfare of athletes in the programme.

Issues had been apparent for some time. The O’Donovans and others had put pen to paper raising misgivings about Antonio Maurogiovanni not long after the Italian was brought in as high performance director by Rowing Ireland in 2017.

“We kind of had some goals that we wanted to accomplish, so you have to kind of work towards those,” said Paul O’Donivan. “Back in probably 2017, Antonio came initially and we stated we weren't very happy with his behaviour towards us.

"And in fairness, he left us off then in a kind of a lightweight training group, which we were more or less able to do our own thing over most of the years.

"Even within that, I was kind of away a good bit and then when I was there we kind of went on separate training camps a lot of the time to the other heavyweight group. We had kind of separate athletes' representatives between the lightweight and heavyweight groups.”

Maurogiovanni remained in the role until 2024.

Paul O’Donovan is currently concentrating on his medical career. Based at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, he hasn’t rowed competitively in eleven months and it may be another year before he prioritises the boat again and focuses on the LA Games in 2028.

He said it wasn’t a “a total surprise” to hear what other athletes were experiencing and added that no person “wants to experience anything like that”. As McCarthy also said in May, some moves have been made in the last year to improve the athlete experience.

“Yeah, so Niall O'Carroll has taken over as new High Performance Director, and he's done a bit of work in the past few months on athletes' charters, and he's preparing some documents on that,” said O’Donovan.

“Also, I suppose, trying to rewrite the selection documents, and a few different things, which time will tell if it will hold up to... I suppose some of the challenges that do come with elite-level sporting people striving to be the best, it's hard to...

“But they seem to be making an effort, and I believe there's a review as well that they're trying to undertake, aren't they? Hopefully for the young people coming up, they won't have to experience what some others have had to experience.” As for his own rowing career, O’Donovan has won all of his major titles to date at a lightweight division that is no longer on the Olympian programme, so last summer brought his first experience in the open weight category.

It’s a big ask given the weight differences involved but he finished fifth at a regatta in Lucerne 12 months ago along with Daire Lynch, two places behind McCarthy and Konan Pazzaia, and is confident it is a step that can be successfully taken.

He’ll be going for more than just another Olympic blazer.

“I think it’s possible, yeah. Like, it’s definitely going to be hard. Nothing is easy in this world. So, time will tell. But I think Fintan has done a good job. Last year, he showed that he’s able to compete with the heavyweight guys.”