Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy still growing after all their successes

If that caused ripples then any long-term fears were calmed by the understanding that this was mid-Olympic cycle and both of the Skibbereen athletes were in the midst of a chapter where they had spent no little time rowing their own boats.

In McCarthy’s case that was quite literal. The younger of the two had put in a backlog of work as a single sculler – even beating O’Donovan in an Irish national final at one point. O’Donovan had completed his medical degree and tried some running in a Leevale singlet.

There was one point there when they hadn't sat in the same boat for a full year but they turn towards Paris now probably as Ireland’s best bet of a gold medal and this is saying something given the wider team's expectations ahead of these Olympics.

A ten-strong boxing team will hope to have a clutch of podium possibilities come the sharp end at Roland Garros. Rhys McClenaghan is favourite to win gold on the pommel at the Bercy Arena. Daniel Wiffen could well bag two top-three spots in the La Défense Arena pool.

There are fingers being crossed on the track, for Jack Woolley in taekwondo, in the rugby sevens and in equestrian. The rowing team could actually deliver on the double or the treble, but O’Donovan and McCarthy remain the primus inter pares.

They have five golds stashed away between them already between Olympics, World and European regattas. O’Donovan’s personal medal haul numbers 13 podiums, ten of them from the top step, and there is no sense of a partnership standing still.

“We've obviously had a few more years together now and a lot of opportunities to practice racing and try different things, different approaches,” says McCarthy, “so I think we've got a lot more under our belts. Hopefully that experience will stand to us.” 

They are the reigning World champions and their abilities as individuals and as a collective were highlighted after that win in Belgrade last September when the row2k website rated McCarthy fourth and O’Donovan first in a list of the entire sport’s best male rowers.

O’Donovan has long been accepted as a generational freak. Three-time Olympian Niall O’Toole once labelled him a phenomenon, a one-in-a-million athlete both in the physical and in the mental sense.

O’Toole made the point that O’Donovan could switch to single sculls on a whim and dominate it almost immediately. The 30-year old has already tried his hand as a heavyweight given this will be the last time lightweight rowing will feature at the Games.

McCarthy is leaning towards the same path post-Paris and the younger man has already demonstrated an ability to learn on the job having overcome what he termed as an “imposterish” syndrome at the start of their collaboration.

“Fintan is very consistent in how he rows, how he trains, all the time, which is very good,” says O’Donovan. “What’s changed over the years is that he’s grown in confidence. You can see in the first few months in the first year that he was in the boat, he was almost questioning himself. Like ‘What am I doing here? Should I be here at all?’ kind of thing.

“As time went on, he could see that his results were very impressive and he was deserving of his seat. Now he’s not afraid to bring his opinion on things and technique and training matters. Although in those days I was a bit older and more experienced, that doesn’t mean that all that I was doing was right or what I said had to be correct and followed.” 

This convergence of ideas and maturity has improved their consistency and their performance over the years. Of that O’Donovan has no doubt. What’s really interesting, and exciting for Paris, is how much that has advanced in the three years since they won in Tokyo.

They may be the best lightweight double scullers on the planet but their technique is often dismissed as agricultural. Their coach Dominic Casey is regularly testing and teasing them to improve it, but their race strategy is imperious.

What sets them apart is their ability to find a speed early and maintain it through 2,000 race metres regardless of other boats, conditions or the toll on minds and body. They call this their ‘red line’. Finding it and sticking to it is their key.

McCarthy took his time to get comfortable with that. Some crews spring from the traps, others bet on a barnstorming finish. Holding your pace – and your head – with all that thrashing around you is an art in itself. It takes time.

“I probably wasn’t fully comfortable with it until the year of the Olympics and you can kind of see that in my singles racing as well,” says McCarthy who won bronze in the lightweight single sculls at the 2019 Europeans. “I would tend to go the other way in a singles race, try to go out hard and hold them off.

“So just being behind Paul and trusting in our process and the work is what led me to be okay with it. I used to deal with it back then by following Paul, putting down as many watts as I can and hanging on. I was never really okay with it until the year of the Olympics, knowing it is what we do.” 

O’Donovan and McCarthy set a world’s best time in their semi-final in Tokyo in 2021. They had almost a second to spare on Germany in the final. They had two-and-a-half seconds on the Swiss in last year’s Worlds in Serbia. There are no guarantees in Olympic sport. These two are the closest Ireland have got to it.