Irish championships in Cork are next on the list for rowing club in Tipperary
Clonmel Rowing Club are wished the very best of luck
To compete at Henley Royal Regatta is on every rower’s bucket list. All the major regattas race over 2,000 metres. The Henley course is a mile and a quarter long (2,112 metres), it has been there since 1839 and they have no intention of changing it anytime soon.
Rowers from 19 different countries were taking part this year, and with dress codes of jacket and tie for men and dresses below the knee for women, Henley is all about tradition.
Clonmel’s Daire Lynch was competing in the Queen Mother Challenge Cup for Quad Sculls with Paul O’Donovan, Fintan Mccarthy and Konan Pazzaia. These guys would be on anybody’s dream team and in the quarter-final they were drawn against Hollandia Rowing Federation, who had won a silver medal at the Europeans back in May.
As they approached the regatta enclosures, Paul O’Donovan hit the turbo switch, the crew followed and they pulled out a length lead, which they maintained to the finish.
In the semi-finals they were up against the GB boat trading under the Nottingham and Union and Leander Club banner. These are big guys who had beaten the aforementioned Hollandia at the Europeans. With swirling crosswinds causing complications in the Irish boat’s steering department, the GB boat got their noses in front by the quarter mile mark, where despite the best efforts of the Irish boat, they dictated terms to the finish line.
In the final the GB boat beat Australia in a new course record.
For Daire Lynch it was time for strawberries and Pimms while keeping an eye on Melvin Twellar’s victory in the Diamond Challenge Sculls. Twellar was in the Dutch 2x that won the silver medal in Paris, beating Lynch and Doyle.
This weekend Daire will be in the UCD 8 competing for the Irish Senior 8s championship, where he will face a UG boat containing James Hurley and Gerald Nugent from Clonmel.
It was back down to earth for Clonmel Rowing Club at Fermoy Regatta, where racing began at 8am.
Clonmel’s first win came when the ever-reliable Edward Wall took the men’s J141x in some style from an 18-strong field. More was to come from Edward when he finished in a dead heat for first place in the J16 1x.
Staying at the Junior levels, Joe O’Brien and Conor Slattery gave a gutsy performance to emerge victorious in the men’s J14 2x.
In the women’s J18 4x, the Clonmel B crew turned the tables on the A crew. However it wasn’t enough to take the win, as Waterford emerged victorious.
Molly Crean won her heat in the J15 1x and came third in the final. In the J15 2x Chris Kane and Dominykas Valuzis finished second to a Fermoy crew cheered on by a partisan crowd.
In the masters racing, Nell McCarthy continues to purr on nicely, winning the 2x with Roseanne Phelan and this duo bagged another win in the 4x+ with Michelle O’Halloran, Ruth Hennessy and young Conor in the driving seat.
Clonmel’s masters single scullers Paul Nugent and Sandra Wall came out on top in the men’s and women’s events. Joseph Ryan and Stephen Ryan kept the good reputation of Clonmel masters intact in the 2x.
All in all, it was a very successful day out in Fermoy.
This weekend Clonmel head to Inniscarra in Cork for the Irish Rowing Championships where their crews, coached by Pat Kinsella and Jimmy Fennessy, face the moment of truth. They have prepared well and we wish them the best of luck. We are fortunate to have a great bunch of guys and girls in Clonmel Rowing Club and they are great ambassadors for the club wherever they compete.