Any adjustment was as swift as it was telling, Paul O’Donovan motoring his way into the semi-finals of the men’s single sculls on day two of the European Rowing Championships in Szeged, Hungary.
The Skibbereen rower, mixing it up with the heavyweights at a championship for the first time, eased in front after the 500m mark then hit the finish five seconds clear of Bulgaria’s Emil Neykov, the son of legendary sculler Rumyana Neykov.
Besides the stiff crosswind, conditions were ideal, O’Donovan finishing in 7:18.66 to give him a shot at making Sunday’s final. The semi-finals are set for Saturday morning (10.44 Irish time).
“It was okay,” O’Donovan said afterwards. “The good people got through yesterday, so there’s the less good people left. It’s a bit easier to race against them than the people that you don’t beat.
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“It’s good fun, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the men’s single races in particular, I know a few of the guys from over the years, but never really raced them at regattas, so it’s good to test out the legs against some of them this weekend.”
O’Donovan had originally entered both the men’s single sculls and the lightweight doubles, along with fellow Skibbereen rower Fintan McCarthy, but after failing to sufficiently recover full fitness after a recent illness, McCarthy withdrew.
So his focus instead is entirely on the men’s singles, the first time O’Donovan has raced at these championships not as a lightweight but with the so-called heavyweights. With the lightweight crews (with a maximum individual weight of 72.5kg) no longer part of the Olympic programme after this summer’s Paris Games, O’Donovan, who turned 30 last Friday, is already looking towards the heavyweights.
It will be a hard task to progress further, with reigning World champion Oliver Zeidler from Germany, Greece’s Olympic champion Stefanos Ntouskos, and Tokyo bronze medallist Damir Martin from Croatia all still involved.
In the women’s double, Alison Bergin (Fermoy RC) and Zoe Hyde (Tralee RC) took second in their repechage and are into Sunday’s final. Olympic, World and European champions Romania took the win, Great Britain missing out, behind Ireland, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
Jake McCarthy, twin brother of Fintan, had already progressed straight to Sunday’s final of the lightweight men’s single after winning his heat on Thursday. Margaret Cremen (University College Cork RC) was also in the lightweight women’s single on Thursday, and finished in second place in her preliminary race, which decided the race lanes for Sunday’s final.
These European Championships don’t offer the chance for any further Irish crews to secure Paris qualification (that chance is only for countries which so far have zero or one boat qualified for Paris, Ireland have already qualified six). The last chance to qualify further Irish boats will come at the Lucerne regatta on May 19th-21st.
Ireland qualified those six boats for Paris at the World Championships in Belgrade last September with the men’s and women’s pair, men’s and women’s double sculls, and men’s and women’s lightweight double sculls making it through.
This event takes none of O’Donovan’s focus off the lightweight doubles in Paris, where he will look to become the first Irish athlete in any sport to win a medal in three successive Olympics, after his silver in Rio (with older brother Gary), and gold in Tokyo (with McCarthy).
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