More than an hour after they left the water the race was still written on their faces. Daire Lynch had a white ice towel draped around his neck. After the medals ceremony he had taken a turn, wobbling with exhaustion. They revived him in the shade. Philip Doyle has a bright expression and a radiant personality, and he was still processing how his hand had slipped on the oar in the mayhem of the final chase.
When they crossed the line there was no display of emotion. They leaned forward in their seats, crumpled from the effort and the blistering heat. Lynch from Clonmel Rowing Club and Belfast Boat Club’s Doyle had become just the fourth Irish crew to win a medal at the Olympics, the first ever in the heavyweight division, but behind their smiles they had expected better than bronze. They didn’t say it in so many words, but they couldn’t hide it. That is how Irish athletes think now. They shoot for the moon.
“I nearly dropped the flipping oar with 50 metres to go,” said Doyle. “So I think a little bit maybe was just relief [after the finishing line]. When we won the semi, when we won the heat, there’s that great feeling of adrenaline as you’re coming in, you know, you’ve got it in the bag. Whereas today, it was just a release almost. It was kind of a wave of positive and negative and relief and disappointment.
“Sometimes you just have to contain that within yourselves and look back and just say like you gave it your all. You can stand up and jump around, but if you’re doing that, you probably could have done more during the race.”
It was a race of relentless brutality. Romania, who had scraped into the final only when Serbia stopped rowing in their semi-final, kicked from the start and were never led once the race settled down. Netherlands, who had been silver medallists in Tokyo and beaten only once in the last two years, chased the Romanians hard and failed to get there. In behind, Ireland nearly caught the Dutch. It was like a demolition derby. Everyone that crossed the line was damaged.
“I’m still a bit shook from it, to be honest,” said Lynch. Neither of them were in the whole of their health. Lynch had been battling a virus all week. Doyle’s neck had flared up during the race. They were rowing at a million miles an hour. There was no other option.
“We had to go earlier than we thought so we had to put more in,” said Doyle. “Well, we knew we’d have to put more in than we had before. So, there was actually a bit of a wash the whole way down and a bit more of a headwind than we thought. So we were being pushed a little bit over and this neck thing has been at me all year, really, and it just sort of started seizing up.
“We were on the red line [for physical effort] and then I kind of just lost the handle a little bit in one of the strokes. I looked and I was like, ‘Please, not too much [to the] left. Where are you going here?’ I looked up and I was like, ‘Oh the Americans are far enough back. We were moving on the Dutch but look, what can you do? You push yourself to the line. Sometimes you fall over it but we managed to rectify it. It was more like a glitch.”
Ireland were down in fifth after 500 metres but established a good rhythm in the middle of the race and were a close fourth with 500 metres to go. They increased their rate to 45 strokes a minute with about 300 metres left and swept past the United States. The Dutch, though, were just beyond their desperate lunge.
For both of them the last Olympics in Tokyo had been an unfulfilling experience. Lynch had travelled as an unused reserve; Doyle was in a boat with Ronan Byrne. Their medal aspirations were unrealised. Redemption is one of the most hackneyed storylines in sport, but you only hear about it when it happens. Most of the time, it doesn’t.
Fifteen months ago Lynch and Doyle stepped into a boat together for the first time. Lynch had studied at Yale and had been working in New York. He came home with Paris on his mind. That was the only reason. Together, they set a course.
“We’re ying and yang personalities,” says Doyle. “But we’ve found the best way to match together and work off each other’s strengths. The things that I lack, he brings and the things that he lacks, I bring. I don’t know what they are, but it seems to work and we’ve had a great partnership over the last 15 months which has borne fruit again and again.
“He was coming back from New York and he wasn’t at his fittest, but then he just got fitter and faster, fitter and faster, and nobody else really had a chance to step into the boat.”
The greatest week in the history of Irish rowing continues on Friday morning. Three boats in finals. Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy will be favourites to retain their Olympic title. Ross Corrigan and Nathan Timoney have designs on the podium. Aoife Casey and Mags Cremen have improved all week and have a puncher’s chance.
There will be more medals. Have no doubt.
