ROWING: So another successful rowing team slipped into Dublin Airport yesterday evening with world-class medals draped around their necks and the Irish sporting world looking toward Lansdowne Road. A collection of girlfriends, siblings and parents, a Tricolour and a bemused airport crowd marked the end of the first turn of the long road.

Four of Ireland's elite - Paul Griffin, Eugene Coakley, Richard Archibald and Tim Harnedy - ended their journey as much relieved with their runner-up position in Japan's World Championships as elated to have sent pulses racing for Beijing.

Few Irish sports set such high standards and expect to meet them and few Irish rowing teams have sent out such heavyweight athletes as a lightweight four.

Their burden is the tradition Sam Lynch and Gearóid Towey and Neville Maxwell and Seán Drey have set over the years and the smile on the face of German coach Harald Jahrling suggested here was a work in progress that will follow that trend.

With silver for the lightweight four, a fifth place for the women's lightweight pair and 10th position for the heavyweight four, there are three Olympic disciplines Ireland can streamline over the next three years and beyond.

"We always had a target for the lightweight four to win a medal in the first year of the new group," says Jahrling, his secondrower's frame and baritone voice rolling across the terminal.

"And with the rest of the team we wanted to bring people up to a higher standard. We actually achieved that. The Olympics? Well that's what we're after.

"We don't look for cheap medals - we look for the ones that really mean something in the process. We are looking for three to four Olympic boats to qualify in 2007.

"But there is improvement to be made. The whole group is very young, very fresh."

To make predictions now would be premature. The scruffy beards and fresh complexions of the medallists indicate a crew in their mid to early 20s, but they are driven by stronger stuff than callow optimism.

"We met expectations," says Coakley. "I suppose we've been working through the ranks from under-23 level and now to finally come through with a silver medal is the fruit of what we'd been working for.

"The medal is something tangible. If you come away without the medal you feel lost and we have been lost with two sixth places in the last two years. So it's nice to break that mould and get on the podium there."

An 11st, 6ft-5in engineer from Skibbereen, a 27-year-old architect from Derry, a 25-year-old and a 23-year-old student from Cork and Kerry and a German tutor give the boat its dynamic, its mix of personality and ability. That must survive and evolve if they are to keep to the path.

"It is really important that this is an Olympic boat because this is the first year of the Olympic cycle so a lot of teams are putting out their new crews for the next four years," adds Coakley.

"It will be a progressional thing from here on in.

"Harald Jahrling has been in position for only six months and he's already brought a whole new technical dimension to our rowing. He's on board for the next four years and that can only be positive."