ROWING/Sam Lynch's Diary: The Fat Guy. My mother always dreads Septembers. I come home and I'm narky and miserable. No rowing. No routine. No fun.

CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A HAPPY ENDING

This one is different. When it comes to rowing there's an inertia about me now. A sort of sluggishness. I have to will myself out of the chair to train. It's a struggle. A voice in my head is saying "poor Sam, poor Sam".

People recognise my name when I am introduced. They are always gentle. They say, "Sam Lynch? Ah yes you were the rower!" Always past tense! They say, "you're the guy who had the weight problem".

And I can see them thinking, "so you're the fat guy".

Nobody ever says, so what's it like to go to the Olympic Games thinking you'll win a medal and to finish? People are gentle.

What's it like? Death on the water. It's like being laid bare. Crossing that line on the morning of the semi-final? Knowing? Shock.

The 24 hours afterwards were just terrible. I spent that time on my own as much as possible. All the spirit was gone. Everything afterwards was a duty. We went in the B final a few days later. Humbled and hurt. Most of the time in races you don't see the 750 mark. In the B final I saw the 100 metre mark and it was agony from there on.

It's sport, though. It's the worst thing that has happened to me in sport. Already it's behind like a bad stretch of water.

What's it like? Better than I feared. I came home on a Tuesday. On the Wednesday my sister, Sarah, had organised a welcome home party for me. I was knocked down by kindness, uplifted by friends. So many people turned up to support me. All these people. I was embarrassed, coming back 10th but I noticed that when I won I never shook as many hands.

People would wave and nod. I've lost and everyone wants you to know they care. I got letters, one in particular from a guy in Enniscorthy. The sentiment was so nice in it. Good advice in there too. People have been good.

I'm not the fat guy but maybe there's a fat guy inside hoping to get out. When it all ended I went crazy for a few days. Supersized myself in a miserable sort of way. I put on two stone in six days. My body is cunning. It recognised that knowing its owner, it mightn't get fed again for two years so it kept screaming for more.

I came out of it, though. The world has other demands. People have worse problems. There are more important things.

The fat guy ain't singing yet.

TWO GREEK GUYS (AND DEBBIE THE UMPIRE )

You'll want to know the story about the weight. Or maybe not. You'll have wondered maybe about what sort of clown goes to an Olympic semi-final and finds out that, hey, he's 4lbs overweight? Perhaps you'll have had a chuckle at the thought of two Irish rowers weighing themselves all week on faulty scales.

There's been so many stories doing the rounds and the strange thing is nobody checks. The bare truth is so banal. Semi-final day at the Olympics. Two years poured into this. We know what we're doing. We do our normal run up to the race, have our 25-minute row in the morning. We go to be weighed two hours before race time.

We come off the scales. I'm .1 of a kilo over. Gags (Gearóid Towey) is .1 of a kilo over. No big deal. I go on the erg machine for seven minutes. Gags does five minutes. Still no big deal. Popular myth has us winning our heat and then scoffing cream buns for a few days while gleefully checking ourselves on a weighing scales which suggests we can't put on weight. Then, so the story goes, we spent two hours before the race sweating like pigs in a sauna. Sorry.

We do our few minutes on the erg and return to the weigh room. While we've been gone the scales the Greek officials have been using have got broken. The two officials give mournful shrugs. It will be some time.

Minutes pass. More minutes. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of standing. Twenty minutes of us losing our temper. Twenty minutes of getting thick with the two Greeks and the two Greeks getting thick back.

It's the morning of an Olympic semi-final. Nobody except myself and Gags have any sense of urgency about this.

Finally, apoplectically, I run out and seize a hapless American rowing umpire. Debbie.

I'm screaming at Debbie. "Please weigh me! Please weigh me!" Debbie comes in. The Greeks are still unsure as to what the hurry is but they bow to Debbie. She takes control. It gets done.

It all got out of hand. Upset the picture a little.

Still.

After the race, when we'd lost, when two years had gone down the drain I stand in front of a group of journalists and somebody asks "what went wrong?" Tritely I say, "three crews finished in front of us, three went through to the final, that's what went wrong".

Somebody put down their microphone and said in frank surprise, "you mean you don't have an excuse?"

Correct. No excuses.

A PETROL PUMP ATTENDANT FROM NORTH AFRICA AND A VILLAGE PEOPLE WANNABE

The B final is like one of those duties surrounding the death of a friend. For most crews it gets done with heavy hearts.

When it's done and dusted I stay in the boathouse for some time wearing my Poor Sam face. When I emerge our spare man, Neil Casey, has kindly taken our boat apart for transporting. Neil is pissed off. He was meant to get a lift off somebody and he has been let down. He's stuck there.

Seeing a chance to get away I offer to commandeer Thor's (Nilson, coach) car. I said I'd drive him back to the village. We drive to Rafina but when I go to drive back all the roads have been closed for the women's marathon the next day. I take to the back roads and get lost.

Now it's hot, incredibly hot. The car is a rental and has no air-conditioning. I'm numb. I'm tired. I'm lower than a snake's belly. I have nothing with me except the shorts I'm wearing.

Then I run out of petrol.

Long story made short. I trudge up this road. Find a petrol station. In my shorts I have a visa card. More about the shorts. They are green but they are not ordinary shorts. They are tight, shiny rowing shorts. I look like a groupie for Village People.

Wearing these and waving my visa card is how I present myself to the man at the garage. He's North African. He has two words of English. I have no words of Greek. We play charades. I need him to put two euro's worth of petrol on the visa so I can trudge back to the car and then drive it back to him where I will buy more petrol.

Finally I get back to Thor. He is busy. Things to do. He's waiting for me. Only for the fact we'd been in the B final that morning he would have gone through me. But I get away with it.

I grab a shower. Put on the rest of my clothes, namely a vest and baggy tracksuit bottoms.

Then I get a phone call from a good friend of mine, Olag Tufte. He's won the Olympic singles title. He's holding a party later in this place just up the road from Marathon. I'm not composed enough to say "no thanks". I get browbeaten into going.

Now I find my family. They are all here. They've been waiting. Waiting not just now but for the last two years for me to have some time. They are wondering what I'm doing next. Absent-mindedly, I say I'm going to go to this thing with Olaf. I scarcely notice the looks on their faces. Obviously they want to have dinner, do stuff with me, salvage something from their trip.

So they announce they are going in to watch Andy Lee fighting because Andy is from Limerick. I can feel the hurt in them. Mum, Dad, my two sisters Ellie and Sarah. They were so disappointed for me all week. Now they are disappointed in me.

They trek off in to Athens. I head the other direction towards Olaf's place in Neomarcki. When my family has disappeared reality intrudes again. I have a visa card, no cash. I begin the four-mile walk along the beach.

I'm tired. More miserable than I've ever been. Four miles to go.

And after a while I have to sit down and laugh. No tears, just laughter. At no point in the last two years has somebody not known where I was, how I was feeling, what I was doing. I've been monitored, tested, trained, weighed, assessed, planned for. It ended this morning and now I'm suddenly on a beach in a vest and tracksuit bottoms with no money and a bag full of stinking kit and the family gone the other way.

The sheer Hollywood melodrama of it! Got up again. Painted a smile on my face. Joined Olaf and his friends and family, the realisation ever keener I should be with my own friends and family who, whatever their disappointments, would be comfortable not speaking in Norwegian.

I duck out after 40 minutes and spend the next two and a half hours sitting in Newmarcki waiting for a taxi.

Part of me is glad. A day like today, well this is as low as it's going to go.

THE FAT GUY'S PARENTS

Here's how it's been for two years: Sam rings home. When Sam rings home everyone is there to support him. Sam rings friends. When Sam rings friends everyone is there to support him. Sam thinks occasionally he'll repay it all by performing well when he goes to the Olympics.

Conversations go like this: "How are you getting on Sam?" "I'm really tired." Poor me.

I've been out of circulation for 18 months and now that I'm back I suddenly realise there's another dimension to this. Everyone close to me, well, their souls have been just as tortured as mine. The only people you expose yourself to are those you are close to. Friends and family. The balance has been tipped in my favour for the last 18 months, two years.

I'm the least sensitive of everyone I know. I'm not defensive about failure. I say things like "well, that was a waste of time wasn't it?" when somebody is tiptoeing around the subject. No point being defensive. It's there to be discussed. I always was quick to take credit for the successes. Now I have to ante up.

I owe. Big time. On the day of the semi-final when we were beaten I sat looking out a window for a long time. Numb. Dreading looking back. Dreading what I had to do. Finally I went out and crossed the bridge over the lake to the main stand.

My family and friends were there, all of them, including 20 or 30 guys from the club.

That's the hardest thing to do, to just walk to the stand and face them and thank them. It had to be done. They'd come all the way to Athens. I just had to walk over a bridge. They'd been there for all the wins. They were there for the defeat.

Now, weeks later I see there's entire relationships which need to be rebuilt. People's lives go on. Sam is a feature of their lives but for the last two years he's been a voice on the phone, a progress report, a demand. Whenever I've called it's been for help and support. The backdrop to everything is the foundation which other people have given, especially my family. For a few years I've been standing on that foundation, taking it for granted.

The family bless me with a hail of small things. One day early this summer in Stromsted I was in the boathouse getting ready for a run and I was jaded, sore, drained and aching.

Suddenly I got an uncontrollable urge to cry. I don't know where it came from. I couldn't cry in front of everyone. Not me. So I rang home. I needed somebody to know I was feeling this bad.

They couldn't understand me for the first five minutes of crying and blubbering but they were there, talking me down when I got myself under control.

When Gags got sick this year I was in knots of tension. There was a period where I just didn't know what was happening, what was going on. We were waiting for the results of Gags' tests, wondering would he be okay.

I was driving down Conyngham Road outside the boat house and I rang Mam. Normally if she's busy she says she'll get back to me.

I just said, "Hi."

She said, "I'm just here with my friend Catherine. Give me a second." She heard something in my voice. She was right. Suddenly the tears were streaming down my face. I had to pull the car in to the side of the road at Donore Harriers. I didn't know what was happening to me. All this time and money and emotion. She just let me go on. I was screaming down the phone at one moment. Incoherent the next. So much tense, emotional energy in there.

These things happened a few times and looking back, that's been the bulk of communications for the past while. My needing something or other. I was out of the country for 220 days last year. Pre-occupied when I was in the country. I've been an absence. A good friend of mine, Gerry O'Shea, articulated this to me last week. I was saying to him how I felt a little uncertain around people at this time. My rowing life has been take, take, take. He pointed out that life for the near future is putting things back in order with family, friends, finances, study.

"You have to slowly work your way back, let people know there's a bit of give as well as take." Starts now.

GAGS

Two years we've been together. Planes, trains and automobiles. Hotel rooms and boats.

It's the day of the Olympic semi-final. We've just crossed the line and somehow we know. The half second that separates us from the Japanese is to their benefit. We haven't qualified. Instantly we're in shock. We've raced well but we couldn't get rid of the Japanese.

So we row back from the finish line to the dock. The longest, most miserable 600 metres we've ever known. We say the things that have to be said. We both knew we've put 100 per cent on the line. We say to each other that at this moment there was nobody else either of us would rather have rowed with. It's been a pleasure. Two years of living in each other's pockets and there wasn't much else to say.

We both had to deal with our limitations but we both knew we gave it all. There's tears in our eyes. This was it.

There is an awkward postscript, though. The aching duty of the B final. Correction already. That 600 metres from the finish line to the dock after the semi-final was bad but this is the hardest thing. We do 8k on the water the night before the B final. We fall into old habits. Getting everything right, talking technique and balance as usual.

There's a voice in both our ears. This project is over. This pair are not going to go on the water after this weekend. After 20 minutes the voices win. And soon we're just paddling up and down, two miserable men in a boat. Me looking at Gags' back. Gags looking at the water.

Later the same night. Thor calls us for a meeting. Myself and Gags with Niamh Fitzpatrick the team sports psychologist and Giles Warrington from the NCT. We sit in the lobby of Thor's hotel waiting for him.

Suddenly I'm crushed by the realisation that there's nothing to say. No plans to make. No future to discuss. It's dead. With my silence I'm making everyone uncomfortable.

I pretend I have to go to the loo. I walk off and hang around the back of the lobby till I see Thor coming down.

In the car afterwards driving back we pull in suddenly and walk down to the sea and swim for 20 minutes or so. It's nice, picturesque. Nothing to say, just the silence. We go back, watch some dumb video. Off to bed. Up early for a run, get weighed, in, race. And that's it. Nothing to say. No animosity. Went our separate ways.

Now I'm looking forward to seeing Gags again. Rowing again. At that point though everything was spent. We're seeing each other this weekend. Gags is involved in this gig for the Irish Cancer Society doing the length of the Blackwater from mouth to source. There will be a 30k row then an 18-mile run and finally a 50k bike ride. If the year we had didn't kill us, this might.

We have different philosophies but we beat the Olympic champions twice when we raced them at heavyweight. We went well. We had potential. I'm not saying we should be Olympic champions. We weren't good enough - end of story.

We'd put ourselves on the line though and we failed.

THOR

Thor still makes me laugh. He's in the papers asking who would employ a 73-year-old coach. He says he wouldn't. A 73-year-old coach could die at any second.

He'll go on forever and I'll still work with him as much as I can. I'm not sure yet what structures are in place for next year, there's nothing solid. No foundation.

I have some ideas of my own. Now is the time to try some.

You can tell Thor feels it in his heart. He's known both days. For me this is a first. I've always been going up the ladder. Now I've gone from being the most confident, certain person in the world, to being a fourth-year medical student who knows absolutely nothing, and who barely knows anyone in his class. The basis of what you are, being a rower, is taken away now. It's a strange time.

Thor knew. For two years he's been harking on about my weight. Being 6ft 3ins and just 11st 3lbs ain't healthy. Gags is an inch shorter and weighs under 11 stone. We knew we were playing Russian roulette, that some day when we looked for the power it wouldn't be there. It happened at the Olympics. The gun went off and blew us away.

Nothing else mattered. Certainly not the erg machine stint. Every morning by that time whether I was weighing in or not I would have done about 45 minutes exercise.

So, I speak to Thor once a week. He's bitterly disappointed still. He's a stoical man but you can tell. He's in good form. Doing a little bit of training himself, he says. Thor gets on with it. I'm going up to Norway in early October to see the friend. I'll spend a day with Thor making plans. Until then I'll train every day to keep things ticking over.

From then on I'll have a clear idea.

DR FAT GUY

Already I'm looking forward to next season. There's no way I'm not getting a return for the work I've done, even if it's a year late. I want something more than an eating disorder and an overdraft.

Most of the day, though, I don't think about rowing. I'm thinking, "oh my God what is the cause of pernicious enemia?" It's great. I'm disappointed but it doesn't drag me down. Everything is new. Getting the Sunday papers. Being around town for coffee. People.

I won't ever compete at 71 kgs again. From now on 72.5 is the minimum for me.

In Athens I was as light as it was physically possible for me to be. I'm not capable of being any lighter without being sick. We were so light we didn't recover well from the heats. We've learned.

It's great when you're 20 and you come fourth in the Olympics and the idea of being 32 years of age seems far less likely than the idea of being an Olympic champion.

Now I'm 28. I can see that I might have four more seasons. I have to look after education. A mortgage. My heart, though, would row forever.

I still love it. A boat, going well, the sky above your head and the wind in your face. I love that, being out on a lake and struggling for the next breath and still thinking I wouldn't be anywhere else.

Losing gives you perspective, but not much. Last weekend in Limerick I went down to the club. I was picking up my boat to bring it to Dublin but I'm trying to make an effort to be seen about the place again and to help the juniors. I've got so much from people in the club.

It was too rough to go out on the Shannon. Pa Mac, the coach, my old coach, was having a rowing duathlon instead - 2k on the erg and a 5k run. There were only three erg machines though, so it was time-trial format.

Pa asked if I wanted to do this. I said no thanks.

I loaded the boat and then thought, why not?

So began my third training stint since the Olympics. Suddenly I'm doing a 2k ergo test. Then I'm running like a fool around the North Circular Road in Limerick to win a club duathlon. Intermediate rowers and junior 15 women. My chest is burning. Legs aching. I'm willing myself.

I come in and I'm saying, "Did I win? Did I win?" I won by a minute and a half.

There's a voice saying, "hold on Sam you were at the Olympics two weeks ago, if you can't win the club duathlon there's something wrong with you", but my own voice is inquiring. "Did I win the erg". "Yes!" "And did I win the run." "Yes!" Pa laughing at me.

"You never lost it, boy." Me smiling. Still a fool for it.