Neptune settle eights debate

Neptune ended the debate about which is the best eight in Ireland yesterday; a crew created by welding an international-class lightweight four to their heavyweight club four blew away the opposition at the national championships at Farran Wood in Cork.

On a weekend when the wind threatened threatened to destroy the entire programme, the fact that the championship happened at all was a triumph. After losing all of the first day, Friday, to squalls and a with a forecast that the latter half of yesterday would go the same way, the organisers did a remarkable thing: they started competition on Saturday at 6.00 a.m. and ended at midnight. The last race was held amid darkness and a soft mist falling across a lake which was now as smooth as a pane of glass.

For the Neptune eights yesterday, the gusting rain and the wash were a problem again. Trinity, the runners-up, suffered the problems of the wash even more acutely. As one would expect from a created crew, Neptune took their time to settle; but as stroke Tony O'Connor put it later: "At the thousand metres we just went for it".

Trinity took second and Garda won a battle with UCD for third by a canvass. Commercial were a foot further back.

The win brought O'Connor and Neville Maxwell their fourth titles of the weekend. With these big guns in action, Neptune won both coxless and coxed fours as well as the lightweight pair. Maxwell now has 15 national titles.

Mary Hussey of Commercial earned five titles, the most satisfactory being yesterday's eights win - the first eights title for Commercial.

The story of the win was very similar to the mens eights race - a crew created in this case from a lightweight quad and heavyweight quad found their rhythm about 1,250 metres in and were in command by the end. UCD were only a length back, with Trinity a canvass further back in third.

Interestingly, the Commercial heavyweight quad of Hussey, Vanessa Lawrenson, Debbie Stack and Susan O'Brien settled their debate with the lightweights on Saturday by beating them.

Hussey's 18-year-old brother Padraig won his second successive junior single sculls title, but the junior success story of the weekend was at least shared with remarkable Cork club Skibbereen. They won the eights and fours and no less than seven of the eight which beat St Michael's into second place by 3/4 length in a tremendously exciting race are eligible again next year.

The international teams which travel to the Coupe de Jeunesse in Italy next month and the home internationals in Scotland next weekend will both feature five Skibbereen athletes.

The image of the day on Saturday was Sam Lynch emerging on to the bank to the whooping and hollering of his supporters from the St Michael's club. Lynch had just had an emphatic win in the lightweight single sculls, beating perhaps the most tenacious man in Irish rowing, John Armstrong of Lady Victoria. Armstrong holds six lightweight and four open titles. But Lynch is now the man of the moment and he knew it.

It was arguable that the quality of the race was weakened somewhat by the absence of the scullers from the Commercial quad. As a quad, they duly won the national title, although they had a strong challenge from Neptune; but none of the individual scullers competed in the single sculls. Lynch nevertheless did what he had to do. "My first singles title, the first of many," he exclaimed. "And I am going to the world (the world championships in Cologne in September)."

His reaction was understandable because he has had two years in which disappointment has been his companion. One of the lightweight coxless fours which finished fourth in the 1996 Olympics, he has since been affected by injury and loss of form.

His fifth in the lightweight single sculls final at the last World Cup regatta in Lucerne seems to have turned his luck around.

In the heavyweight single sculls, Neptune's Albert Maher had his expected win, although not by as much as expected. The up and coming Padraig Hussey pushed him to within half a length.