Sydney places at stake for Irish

And so two Irish crews face the final hurdle: the Irish men's lightweight four and lightweight double know that places at the Sydney Olympics are at stake at Lucerne today.

The draw for the Irish crews has certainly been favourable: the lightweight double crew face Moldova, Ukraine, Spain and Sweden. If they can win this they go into Wednesday's final.

"It's the best you could hope for," said team manager Mick O'Callaghan yesterday. "It gives them a chance of winning the heat. It's a very good draw," echoed the crews' coach, John Holland.

The lightweight four face Germany and Greece - and the Irish will certainly fancy their chances of winning this heat and qualifying directly for the final.

The weather here is wet and cool, but news from the camps is good. The double of Derek Holland and Niall O'Toole has had a successful training camp in Switzerland.

This is the crew which came so close to winning automatic qualification at last year's World Championships but has faltered this year. The class is certainly there - O'Toole is Ireland's only World Championship gold medallist, a title he won as a lightweight single sculler in 1991 in Vienna, and Holland was part of the lightweight four which came within metres of a medal at the 1996 Olympic regatta on Lake Lanier.

Any list of likely candidates for the two places available in the lightweight four might now be headed by Ireland. This crew were outstanding at the Munich World Cup regatta last month, taking bronze on their first serious competitive row together, and since then astounded some by their gutsy - and almost successful - challenge to the Australian heavyweight crew in the Stewards' semi-finals at Henley Royal Regatta.

They have experience in abundance: Tony O'Connor and bowman Neville Maxwell were part of the aforementioned four in the 1996 games, while Gearoid Towey and Neal Byrne won bronze in the lightweight quadruple scull at last year's World Championships in Canada. But while they are a confident and improving crew they are careful to keep cockiness at bay.

"The speed is definitely there and getting faster, now it's a matter of being focused on the qualification regatta, and racing as we can," Maxwell ventures.

But he adds that it will be a tense occasion. "But the crew seems to perform well in racing so we intend to simply look upon this as another race to be won."

The main rivals for the Irish in seven declared entries are likely to be Britain and Germany, but should the Irish make it they will be interested to know that reigning Olympic champions Denmark, whose crew has been far and away the best in this discipline for the last five years, will make an enforced change to their crew for Sydney.

Thomas Poulsen, who suffered a knee injury at the end of May, has not recovered. He will be replaced by 24-year-old Soren Madsen, who reportedly beat off several rivals for the coveted place and had been training with the crew for about a week.