In a fitting end to what had been an outstanding championships, a powerful Garda crew pulled out all the stops to win the men's senior eights title at the National Rowing Championships at Farran Wood in Cork yesterday.
Garda, taking their first senior eights title since 1983, rated 46 to open an early lead over the Irish under-23 eight, who got up to a stunning 48, and held them off to the end with push after push as the big crowd roared them home in perfect conditions.
It was the weekend when the next generation of Irish rowers took firm hold of the spotlight. Skibbereen's young men and women looked very much like the future of Irish rowing, never more so than yesterday when a men's quadruple scull with an average age of only 18 rowed down holders Neptune, whose stroke and bow men Gary O'Neill (33) and Brendan Dolan (33) are of a different generation.
It wasn't just Skibbereen sending out the message of youth coming to the fore: Kerry's Muckross got in on the act, too.
Less than an hour after Skibb's performance Paul Griffin (20) and Sean Casey (22) were rowing down Commercial's thirty something senior pair of Emmet O'Brien and Donal McGuinness to take gold.
The first championship finals on Saturday had seen a Muckross/UCC combination win the men's senior coxed four in an exciting final, with the holders Neptune finishing only fourth.
The combination crew, all only barely in their 20s, swept into the to win by five seconds at the end as Commercial faded back to third and Tribesmen took second.
We will be seeing more of these four rowers: Griffin, Casey, a university student in Temple in the US, James Mangan (21) and UCC man George Byrne (21).
Commercial, with the addition of Killorglin's Fiola Foley, took the blue riband of women's rowing, the eights title, by a full seven seconds from Neptune yesterday.
The Commercial quadruple scull of Audrey Phelan, Becky Quinn, Siobhan Foreman and Fiona Murphy also won gold, and Phelan and Foreman took the women's double scull yesterday.
Foley, another who has benefited from the American university system, took the women's senior single sculling title.
