Olympic bronze medallist Daire Lynch brings it all back home to Tipperary

Olympic bronze medallist Daire Lynch has rowed in venues all over the world at this stage but he recently took time off from his busy schedule to go back to The Island, the place where his rowing career started with Clonmel Rowing Club over 11 years ago.

The club held a draw for its junior members to see who would get the opportunity to row with Daire and the lucky winner was Emily Delahunty from Ballylooby.

Emily comes from a family steeped in rowing. Her mother Sarah used to row with  Clonmel and her grandfather Tom Fennessey is a lifelong member of Clonmel Rowing Club and former President of the IARU (Irish Amateur Rowing Union, now Rowing Ireland).

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13-year-old Emily enjoyed her row with Daire and wasn’t overwhelmed by the  magnitude of filling Philip Doyle’s shoes.
Afterwards Daire posed for  photos with the rowers and answered their questions on his training regime.

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Training for rowing can be very intense and it is well known that Daire can be fanatical in his dedication to training, mentioning one occasion when a rowing event was called off because of bad weather; he came home and vented his frustration by doing 60 kilometres on the  rowing ergometer.

Most of us have a dread of the ergometer, but Daire loved it  because you could measure precisely your rate of improvement. That morning he had been down at the National Rowing Centre, where he had done 8x2k flat out pieces with none other than Paul O’Donovan, Ireland’s most successful Olympian in any sport.

The plan for this combination is to row in the next World Cup Regatta in Lucerne in the heavyweight 2x. Coaches from all the top rowing nations will watch this one with keen interest.

Daire showed the junior rowers the welts on his hands from the intense training and they were pretty gruesome. 

Everybody enjoyed the tete-a-tete with Daire and who knows, we might get another Olympian from Clonmel’s current crop of junior rowers.