Regattas suffering from growing professionalism

Rowing: Be careful of what you wish for, as you just might get it. As a range of Irish sports are discovering, growing professionalism can play havoc with competition at lower levels.

Tomorrow's Trinity regatta, one of the highlights of the domestic year, will have 133 races across nearly 30 different disciplines, but the standard will not be top class. All Irish regattas are facing the same problem - the leading athletes are part of the international squad.

"The best regattas appear to be the squad trials, especially from the competitors' point of view," says Micheal O'Connell, one of the Trinity organisers, and part of the Lady Elizabeth Boat Club eight which looks the pick of the five men's senior eights.

O'Connell suggests that some trials might be incorporated into regattas. If it was possible, the public would surely be tickled by the chance of seeing competition between men such as Gearóid Towey and Niall O'Toole, both former world champions and both big successes in the recent trials at Inniscarra Lake.

Current world champion Sam Lynch and former champion Sinead Jennings were exempted from competition at the trials - but not from some keenly targeted words from Thor Nilsen, who heads up the lightweight programme.

Nilsen said Lynch is at present physically in good shape but "behind where he was last year" due to injury, his exams as a medical student and a loss of focus due to attending the celebrations of his win last year. He also said the Limerick man should not row at below 71 kilogrammes, which suggests that a lightweight four rather a lightweight double could be the Olympic-class boat for him.

Jennings won a gold medal less than two years after taking up the sport, but with an unconventional technique which she has to transcend to form a successful crew boat. "We cannot teach anybody else to row like that," Nilsen said. It is a problem for her, he said, that "she has been world champion and suddenly she is a beginner again."

Heather Boyle and Fiola Foley showed at the trials that they are performing well, with Boyle beating Foley into second in a single sculls race.

An under-23 men's lightweight four of Ciarán Hayes, Richard Coakley, Daniel O'Dowd and Dave Mannion and a pair of Mike Ryder and Stuart King have been chosen for the world under-23 championships as has Alison Downey in the lightweight single sculls.