Vintage year for Ireland’s rowers comes to a close

The team of the year are rowers, the videos have gone viral and pull like a dog is the catchphrase of the day. Rowing in Ireland is coming to the end of a stunning 2016. And the strange thing is that it doesn't seem that strange.

For a while now, this minority sport has been doing the right things.

The boring stuff – coporate governance, coach education. And it appointed Morten Esperen as high-performance director. He didn't expect too much but saw no reason why a small country could not excel – he came from one, Denmark, which does.

And then, of course, there is the engine which is Skibbereen Rowing Club.

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Dominic Casey, that mix of Svengali and the Pope, says that when kids come through the doors of the club first they see the honours board and they ask what it is. "The next time they come in, they ask: 'How can I get on that?'"

Club honours now include Olympic silver for the O'Donovan brothers. And Casey has joined the Ireland system as a full-time coach.

Gary and Paul are a bonus, a little epiphenomenon which took off when all the other stuff clicked into place. They are mad flights of fantasy and gut-bursting effort. Eager to please and grounded. Deft and iron-willed – the best of west Cork, basically.

Not everything in Irish rowing has a glow. The transition of underage talent to adult level has been as thin as gruel. College athletes have not transitioned in big numbers to the international team. The three crews which did so well in Rio were the entire Olympic effort – there was no big swell of Olympic boats behind them.

World Championships

Against this background, the World Championships at Rotterdam was almost as pleasing as Rio. A fine crop of home-grown coaches and young athletes looked well-suited to the big stage. Paul O'Donovan won gold, but Mark O'Donovan and Shane O'Driscoll finished fourth in the senior lightweight pair and the under-23 lightweight pair of David O'Malley and Shane Mulvaney were also just one place off a medal. The junior double of Ronan Byrne and Daire Lynch took a promising eighth. The Tokyo Olympiad could be as exciting as the one just passed.

A sweet thing about 2016 was seeing Claire Lambe and Sinéad Lynch starting an Olympic final. The Cabra girl (26) and the Donegal native (39) completed each other.

The year ahead? The young talent staking their claim. An Ireland lightweight double, probably Paul and Gary, competing for top honours: defending their European gold, battling with France, Norway and others through the World Cup series and all the way to the World Championships. Sanita Puspure, a European and World Cup medallist in 2016, putting Rio disappointment behind her with podium finishes.

Fantasy? Perhaps. But we’ve become used to it.

Out on the Atlantic, Gavan Hennigan has been eating up the nautical miles between La Gomera and Antigua, even after a Wednesday night of torrential downpours and changeable winds.

Though he is a solo oarsman, he holds fourth position in the 12-boat Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, ahead of a four, two trios and two pairs, as well as the other three solo rowers.

The Galway man has been involved in a battle with American Oarsmen (a trio) for third. Hennigan has been travelling farther, but his southerly arc means he has been losing ground to the Americans in the official rankings.

The Pull Like a Dog documentary on Paul and Gary O'Donovan goes out on RTÉ One on Tuesday, December 27th at 9.25pm.