ROWING/Weekly column: Gearóid Towey doesn't let the grass grow under his feet. The sculler is resuming training for the Athens Olympics but felt the need for a more immediate challenge.

So last Friday - three days before the event - he decided to compete in the Dublin Marathon.

Jogging much of the distance to avoid any chance of injury, he covered the course in three hours and 40 minutes. "It was great to be able to race and have no pressure," he said.

Towey and his lightweight double sculls partner, Sam Lynch were to backbone a quadruple scull for tomorrow's Fours Head in London, but Lynch and the two other members of the crew, Derek Holland and Briton Tom Kay, have been struggling with injuries so the crew has been abandoned.

Lynch rates his injury, a calf strain, as "minor", and like Towey is looking forward to the Ireland training camp in Spain, which begins on Monday week and runs until Christmas.

Both men welcomed the news that Thor Nilsen, the man who coached them to a bronze medal at last year's World Championships, is to receive the 2003 FISA Distinguished Service to Rowing Medal.

Nilsen's results include over 30 World Championships gold medals and eight Olympic gold medals. Lynch and Towey will hope the latter number goes up by at least one in August.

The award for 2003 FISA Male Rower or Crew of the Year will be presented to James Tomkins and Drew Ginn of Australia, who caused consternation in British rowing when they emphatically won the men's pair final at the World Championships in Milan, beating James Cracknell and Matthew Pinsent into fourth place.

Cracknell and Pinsent will form part of a four on the Thames tomorrow, surely an indicator that they intend to campaign in Athens in a four.

Queen's University have two entries in the head, a coxless four and a coxed four but an Irishman may still dispute the major honours - Alan Campbell from Coleraine coxes the Tideway Scullers' School quadruple scull which will go off third.