ROWING:Ireland's top juniors have plenty of reasons to be happy today after coming home from Varese in Italy with three silver and three bronze medals from the Coupe de la Jeunesse. The competition is a two-day event at a level just below the World Junior Championships, with 12 European nations taking part.
In very hot conditions the medals came through three crews who each took silver and bronze. The women's quadruple scull of Claire Lambe, Lisa Dilleen, Laura Gannon and Ciara O'Connor took silver behind Britain yesterday, adding it to Saturday's bronze medal.
Two men's crews took silver on Saturday and bronze yesterday. The quadruple of Killian O'Shea, Peter Grogan, Conor Doorley and Peter Chambers were pipped for silver yesterday by Italy, having held off Hungary to take the silver on Saturday.
The men's coxed four were the favourites to medal for Ireland and Colm Donohue, Max Humphreys, Joe Heskin, Peter Hanily and cox Niall McInerney obliged on both days. Indeed they were less than a second off the gold medal spot, taken by Britain, on Saturday.
Young Donegal woman Laura D'Urso showed her class by bouncing back from a failure to make the A Final in the single scull on Saturday to a fifth placing yesterday.
Coach Neasa Folan deserves credit for the preparation of the crews, and team manager Denis O'Regan was joined by Ireland's senior team manager Mick O'Callaghan at the event.
"It was a very good weekend," said O'Callaghan. "The standard is climbing in the Coupe. There are 12 countries now - and while before you would always have Britain, France or Italy on the podium, there were times here when that wasn't the case.
"What's most positive for Ireland is we were in the picture in the the two quadruples on both days. I always consider the quads to be the toughest event in the Coupe. The standard is always there." All 12 countries were involved in the men's quadruple and the women's equivalent had the highest entry for a single event of eight crews.
O'Callaghan said the senior training camp in St Moritz is going well. The squad return to Ireland on Wednesday and the team for the World Championships, which begin on Sunday fortnight (August 26th), will be named this day week. The one crew to be finalised is the men's lightweight four.
