Juniors brighten dull Irish weekend

It was a disappointing weekend for the Irish competitors at the World Cup regatta at Vienna and at Henley Women's Regatta, but the performance of the national junior squad in a fine eights race in Athlone, which was won by Trinity, helped lift the gloom somewhat.

The Irish involvement in Olympic events at Vienna ended with the repechages on Saturday, although for varying reasons. The two double sculls of Niall O'Toole and Neal Byrne and Gearoid Towey and James Lyndsay-Finn failed to make the semi-finals as both finished third in races where only the top two qualified for the semis.

This augurs badly for the prospects of qualifying this boat for the Olympics, and the expected option of putting our top lightweight sculler, Sam Lynch, into the crew may have to be executed sooner rather than later.

The lightweight four made it through their repechage, finishing second to Canada in a race where the first three boats qualified, but then did not take part in the semi-finals as Neville Matthews had to return to Ireland for personal reasons.

According to coach John Holland it had been a "disappointing" weekend in any case for the four, who now go into the final World Cup regatta in Lucerne next month and the World Championships in Canada later in the year knowing they must improve their performances significantly to pre-qualify for Sydney.

The young men of the junior squad eight who took on the choppy waters of wind and rain-swept Lough Ree in the Athlone regatta on Saturday are more likely to have their eyes on Athens in 2004, but they showed that they have already grasped the fundamentals.

The four-boat eights final was relatively even in the early stages, but as Garda and UCC began to fade and Trinity assumed an amazingly smooth and powerful rhythm given the awful conditions, the event began to look like two races.

The junior squad, to their real credit, pushed Trinity for much of the way, and even looked like they might catch them with about 400 metres to go, although Trinity then assumed control and won easily, even if the verdict was 11/2 lengths.

For Garda, the result compounded their disappointed at losing number six man Graham Tolan to mumps and bow-man John Dillon, who was returning from injury, to a stabbing in the course of his duty.

Fordham University opted not to compete in the final, but went on to take the top honour at yesterday's Galway's regatta.

The smaller boats served Ireland best at women's Henley, although two of our top single scullers, Ailis Holohan and Medhb Terry, met in the second round, with Kilkenny's Holohan coming out on top, only to be beaten at the next stage.

Offaly's Niamh Ni Chealchair made it all the way to the semi-finals in the junior single sculling discipline, but then lost out. Her sister Ciara was beaten in the senior event in the first round.

UCD's club eights challenge came off the rails in the second round at Henley - Neptune had been beaten by Thames in the first round, even though they had a very quick time. Carlow's junior eights and fours also lost out.