ROWING: With an entry of 520 crews from 48 clubs, St Michael's head of the river on the Shannon tomorrow is set to be one of the rowing events of the year - and one of the biggest Irish sporting events of any nature this month.
High water levels in recent days had abated by yesterday and the organisers are hopeful that the two-mile course, from Castleconnell to O'Brien's Bridge, will be in good order. The forecast is for rain.
The big entry owes much to the appetite of club athletes for early-season action, but both senior and junior international athletes will also be involved.
The junior squad have entered three eights, and with Methodist College, Belfast, and Portora represented these clubs have taken the chance to field crews of their own.
The national senior squad, rowing as Tara, have also entered a number of crews, drawing from a pool of five athletes: Niall O'Toole, Danny O'Dowd, Kenny McCarthy, David Wallace and Stuart King.
Sam Lynch, a member and strong supporter of the host club, is entered as a single sculler, but he said yesterday he would not be competing.
The members of the elite lightweight squad who have been involved in intensive training in Seville return to Ireland today for a short break.
The elite group will participate in the informal Spirit Cup in Seville in three weeks, but Lynch's partner in the international lightweight double, Gearóid Towey, said the double had not yet decided whether they would try to take on the heavyweights or participate as a lightweight crew.
Sinead Jennings has been given a dispensation from the national ergometer tests which must be completed by athletes this week. Jennings, who along with Heather Boyle has been training with the elite men in Spain, fears the Concept 2 machine could re-aggravate her injuries.
While Jennings will be carded for the year ahead, neither Boyle nor Fiola Foley was part of the grants scheme published yesterday.
Some of the details of the Irish rowing programme for the Olympic Games in Athens have been emerging.
The team are set to be billeted in the Olympic Village, primarily because this will rule out the myriad security checks which would otherwise be part of reaching the course.
The team will travel to Zagreb in Croatia for a three-week pre-Olympic camp. Sam Lynch will no doubt hope this sets the right tone: the Limerick man won the first in his impressive sequence of World Championship medals there in 2000 (silver in the lightweight single scull).
He followed it with gold in 2001 and 2002 and a bronze in the lightweight double last year.
No doubt he will be hoping Athens will continue the sequence.
