ROWING:SINÉAD JENNINGS, the world champion in the lightweight single sculls in 2001, will try to qualify for this year's Olympic Games as a heavyweight.

The Donegal woman won gold in Lucerne after a few short seasons in the sport, but her attempts to transfer this form into the Olympic-class lightweight double have not been realised. So far this season her medical studies have left her with a curtailed programme in training camps, but she says she has been going faster than ever in a single in training.

She heads for a camp in Portugal on Monday hoping to impress lightweight coach John Holland.

"My aim is to go in a heavyweight single or heavyweight double, but I'm not closed off from anything. I just want to go in the fastest boat possible."

Jennings is 173cm tall (just over 5ft 8in), and reckons her most competitive weight is 60kg (just a kilogram above the lightweight grade), which means that, however the season goes, she could be called on by Holland for his lightweight group, where Niamh Ní Cheilleachair and Orlagh Duddy have been forming a lightweight double scull.

Caroline Ryan and Heather Walshe have been Ireland's top heavyweights in recent seasons, and have had their own ambitions to represent Ireland in the heavyweight single or double.

The first World Cup regatta in Munich is only two months away, and the Olympic qualifier in Poland five weeks beyond that. Informed speculation suggests that, even though Ireland have already qualified a four for the Olympics, Ireland's top heavyweight men's boat this season could yet be a heavyweight pair.

Former British team member Jonno Devlin is set to be given the all clear to row for Ireland, and he teamed up with Seán Casey to form an impressive pair at the Fisa Team Cup last month.

Ireland head coach Harald Jahrling will be the key man in making the call, and he should know about successful pairs: he won two Olympic gold medals for East Germany in a coxed pair.

Holland will put his crews on the water in a regatta in Piediluco in Italy next month. He has been experimenting with the lightweight four, moving Gearóid Towey in to the two seat and Eugene Coakley into the bow. Towey and Richard Archibald have been on the stroke side, with Paul Griffin and Coakley on the bow side.

The supporters of the proposed world-class rowing course in Portadown are still hopeful it may go ahead. The organisers of London 2012 have not given it the green light, but if funding comes on board it will be considered again. The key man is Peter Robinson, in charge of the purse strings in Stormont - and likely to fill bigger shoes soon.

The National Rowing Centre (NRC) in Cork is also waiting for capital funding to lay a top-class international course and provide photo-finish equipment and finish towers. The NRC will stage the Coupe de la Jeunesse, a European junior championship, in July.

Mick O'Callaghan, who has been the force behind the centre, is hopeful the funding will come through. The upgrade, he said, would bring the course to World Cup standard.

The shoot-out in New Zealand has gone Mahe Drysdale's way. The selection will be made today, but the 29-year-old reigning world champion in the single sculls won two out of three races against Rob Waddell (33). Waddell, the gold medallist from the 2000 Olympic Games, had returned to the sport to challenge for a place in Beijing.

Waddell said he suffered from a return of a heart irregularity in the decisive third race.