Ireland enjoyed a double success in Aiguebelette, France, yesterday, when their men's lightweight coxless pair and lightweight quadruple sculls stormed to victory in their heats. The coxless pair of Neville Maxwell and Anthony O'Connor finished nearly a second ahead of the French team, fully justifying their second seeding.

Last year's world silver medallists looked impressive as they led from start to finish and could even afford to cruise over the line. Their time of six minutes 40.48 seconds was the quickest of all the heats by seven seconds and they were nine seconds ahead of current world champions Denmark. Jeppe Kollat-Jensen and Jacob Ovji Nielsen won heat two.

Matthias Binder and Benedikt Schmidt of Switzerland won the third heat in impressive style and loom as the main challengers to the Irish and Danish pairs.

In the quadruple sculls, the Irish crew of John Armstrong, Brendan Dolan, Neil Byrne and Emmet O'Brien made up half a second to win their heat and qualify for the semi-finals on Friday.

They enjoyed some luck as Germany, last year's world silver medallists, and the powerful US team were drawn in the other heat and will have to go into the repechage after losing to the Italians. Italy, Germany and the US all clocked better times than the Irish quad. However, another Irish pair, Noel Monahan and Gearoid Towey, will have to face the repechage in the lightweight double sculls after they finished sixth and 20 seconds behind winners Germany in their heat.

Host nation France also had a satisfactory day with three crews; the men's lightweight coxless fours, men's coxed fours and quadruple sculls all winning heats. Today and tomorrow see repechages in the 23 categories, save for the women's coxless pairs, where there will be a direct final with only six teams remaining.