Rowers Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch clinch Olympic bronze for Team Ireland in the men’s double sculls
With Medals Daire Lynch Pic: Inpho/morgan Bronze Their Celebrate And Ireland’s Doyle Philip Treacy
Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch have claimed Ireland’s fourth medal of the Paris 2024 Olympics with a bronze in the men’s double sculls. It also the first men's heavyweight rowing medal ever earned by Ireland at a Games.
It follows up on the bronze the pair won at the World Championships in Belgrade last September and, for Doyle, it is a sea change from his Tokyo experience when he was, similarly, a firm medal favourite along with Ronan Byrne but couldn’t make the final.
The expectation was that the race would be won by the Dutch duo of Melvin Tweller and Stef Broenink, who had been in imperious form all year. Instead it was Romania’s Andrei Sebastian Cornea and Marian Florian Enache who took the gold.
The Romanians weren’t even in this boat at those 2023 Worlds, two of their compatriots instead winning the B final and, essentially, finishing seventh but they pushed out hard early and stayed there.
Lynch told RTÉ later that they had expected that from the Eastern Europeans but though they would comeback to the pack. Romania, he said, had done the same in their semi and only sneaked into the final when Serbia floundered.
Thin margins and all that.
Doyle said the winners on the day were “on another planet”.
Doyle told the national broadcaster that he had made a mistake at the end as they seemed to surge towards the Dutch and a silver medal, that this was a consequence of the serious effort expended mid-race, but that they had enough to hang on.
“I made a massive mistake there at the end. I have to apologise, I think we were coming for the Dutch big time. We could smell them and sniff them. We knew these lads [Romania] were on some other planet," he said.
“We went earlier, pushed harder through the middle because we knew people would have something else. The mistake I made was a combination of all the extra work I had to do in the middle.
“I could feel his legs going, I could hear his calls. We went early in our spring and thankfully we had enough to make the mistake and keep going. On another day….We’ll look back we’ll see where we can improve for whatever is coming next. Fair play to this big lad here."
Doyle and Lynch’s achievement makes it four medals now for Ireland at these Games, following on from the gold and bronze won the swimming pool by Daniel Wiffen and Mona McSharry and the bronze secured so far by Kellie Harrington.
“I was running out of mitochondria in my right arm," Doyle added, "we had to go early, we thought if we went to Dutch like that we would end up clearing field, but the lads had a stormer, you can’t take anything away from them.
“It’s the first heavy medal ever, it’s nice to write that into the history books, and do what we were saying we’d do all week, we tried to be calm, confident, a little bit under radar, and it’s nice to get to the podium."
Lynch added: “I think what the Romanians did we expected but we didn’t think hold on, they nearly got knocked out of that semi-final, they were nearly gifted that final spot by Serbia who stopped rowing.
“I didn’t think they’d been in that form, how much they turned around so much in the space of two days. We were kind of going toe to toe with the Ducth, we knew our sprint was a lot better than the Americans, but obviously you have doubts and think they might have a bit extra in Olympic final. We pushed on, tried to push early to let them know they were going to slip"