Fintan McCarthy ready to tackle heavyweight division at LA Olympics
Photo Team An David Ireland D Uachtaráin At Michael Rower Ireland Fintan Mccarthy The Of Higgins Homeing President By Team At Fitzgerald/sportsfile Greets áras Ireland
What next? It’s the question everyone asks of Olympians when the Games are over. Some have an answer on the tip of their tongue. Others can spend months, in some cases years, working out how to turn the page.
It’s five weeks since Paris passed the Olympic flame on to Los Angeles but the era of immediate cold turkey, where Irish sportspeople returned from the greatest show on earth to a complete void without anything in the way of support is over.
Athletes now can avail of expert sports psychology and lifestyle advice from the Sport Ireland Institute as they digest their experiences and come to terms with this new phase in their careers and lives. And then there are days like Friday.
Roughly half of Team Ireland’s representatives, as well as coaches, staff and family members, spent the morning meeting President Michael D Higgins before bussing into town for an official homecoming ceremony at Dublin Castle.
“It’s mad it's gone so quickly but it was great to get everyone back together and see the president,” said Fintan McCarthy. “It was lovely to hear what he had to say about the effect all the success from all of us in Paris has done for the country and for him.
“We got to see the dog as well, Misneach, so we were happy.”
McCarthy was joking about struggling with the lack of normality weeks ago. He is still trying to return to some sort of sleep schedule.
Training will at least pick up this next week as he tackles the famed Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston next month.
Paul O’Donovan added to the gold medal both men won in the lightweight double sculls in Paris by claiming a single sculls equivalent at the Worlds in Paris. Philip Doyle, an Olympic silver medallist with Daire Lynch, is aiming for an Ironman next.
Everyone has their way of moving on.
“I’m pretty free after [Boston]. I probably have some decisions to make,” said McCarthy. “Like where I am going to be based for the year.
"The [next] Olympics is far enough away that you can change things up and try something different.
“So I am going to think about that until Christmas and then make some solid decisions.”
Spain appeals to him and it feels like everyone is making a beeline for Australia. Either way, the move away from the centralized high-performance centre in Ovens in Cork is probably no bad thing for a man entering his third four-year cycle.
Whether he stays or goes, change is coming.
Lightweight rowing is done as an Olympic sport as of now. O’Donovan has already declared his intention to tackle the ‘heavies’ next time and McCarthy’s leaning in the same direction was confirmed at Dublin Castle.
“We’ve probably been thinking about it already. I don’t think any of us are finished with the sport and the only events left in the Olympics are heavyweight events, so we will have to put a plan together for how we are going to tackle that.
“It’s been done very well by some people in the past but it has also been done wrong so I think we need to have a look at what’s worked for others and what’s worked for us as well in the past because there’s not a huge difference between us and the heavyweights.”
He’s 27 years of age now and the need to weigh-in at 69 kilos every race was starting to wear thin anyway. McCarthy’s natural weight is in and around the 75/76 mark and they won’t be the first rowers to attempt a move up to the bigger boys.
Aleix Garcia and Rodrigo Conde finished fifth in the men’s double sculls in Paris having competed against McCarthy and O’Donovan in years past. The Spanish pair are also World silver medallists from 2022 and two-time runners-up in the Europeans.
McCarthy has already bent their ear on what’s required, and they have been training daily alongside Doyle and Lynch and various other Irish heavyweight crews in Inniscarra for years now, so the new environment won’t be completely alien.
That said, there’s no underestimating this step either. The winning heavy double sculls crew in France was the Romanian duo of Andrei Cornea and Marian Enache. Two bigger, more imposing physical specimens you would struggle to find.
McCarthy, like O’Donovan, is a generational athlete. The fact is that he would have continued on rowing as a lightweight if the lines had not been redrawn, but the prospect of such a unique challenge will serve as fuel from here to 2028.
“As of right now, looking at a gold medal for me would be a huge challenge. I’m not going to say unrealistic. It would be really difficult to achieve that, especially in heavyweight, so I think there has to be something else.
“At the moment, even the excitement of seeing if it will be possible to be competitive and move on … because we have already reached the pinnacle of the lightweight event. So seeing whether we can move on and see how we get on there is exciting enough.”