Need to improve standards

ROWING:ROWING IS not a flash sport. A little like the swan's graceful glide across the water, it all depends on a lot of paddling like hell done where no one is watching.

The charred mass left in the wake of the boat burning by vandals at the National Rowing Centre contrasted with the clean lines of the magnificent boathouse and the honest effort of the athletes to impress in the national trials.

This week some crews which will represent Ireland have already been chosen and others are being tried out. Seán Casey is set for an international regatta in the men’s single; Cormac Folan and Martin Walsh are training in a pair; 10 lightweight men at senior and under-23 level have been fashioned into a training group, as have four under-23 scullers – Rory O’Connor, Ali Floyd, Patrick Moore and Conor Doorley.

The outstanding Lisa Dillen and Laura D’Urso are off to Munich junior regatta, while the men’s junior pair of Tommy Deere and Niall Murphy have nailed down their place at the Coupe de la Jeunesse, a European junior championship. Six lightweight women have marked themselves out as the best in their class.

Single sculler Sanita Puspure and Alison Graham and Rachel Beringer, who won the women’s pair, will also represent Ireland at the Home Internationals if they do well at the National Championships. More important than identifying where crews will eventually wear the green this season, argues performance director Martin McElroy, is the need to improve the standard overall.

McElroy came from the British system, which is the best in world, and where there is a “training culture”. Top athletes who want to improve head for Caversham and know they will encounter the best.

“We need to create a training group and begin to create a Rowing Ireland culture,” says the Galway man. But this surely demands a critical mass? “And a critical commitment as well,” he interjects.

The point will not be lost on the athletes who looked sweat-soaked and exhausted on Sunday after undergoing a gruelling set of ergometer tests – six kilometres with only a short break – before going out on the water. McElroy and lead coach Adrian Cassidy were clearly laying down a marker as to the commitment and stamina needed at this level.

Tomorrow’s Trinity Regatta has a much bigger entry than last year’s.

It is a semi-status event in terms of grading, but if favoured by the weather it could be entertaining and informative.

In the men’s senior eight, the hosts are set to face NUIG in the first semi-final, with Neptune taking on UCD in the second.

The women’s senior eight semis feature a reprise of the Corcoran Cup between Trinity and UCD and a contest between Commercial and a University of Limerick/UCC combination crew.

Castleconnell’s Adaptive Regatta on Sunday has 10 races, all of them finals. Crews from the United States and the Netherlands are part of the entry.

This is also the first event of the Waterways Ireland row-for-it junior league.