ROWING NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS:IT MAY turn out to be the summer of replays, but no one saw this coming. In an almost exact reprise of last year's race, NUIG pipped Queen's University on the line to win the senior eights title at Farran Wood in Cork on Saturday.
Last year the margin was 0.4 of a second; this year it was all of 0.13.
Muckross, backboned by three Olympians and tipped by all to be in the hunt, were brushed aside as these two rivals turned back the clock a year.
As happened in 2009, Queen’s held a slim margin as the crews swept past the cheering crowds at the boathouse, but NUIG closed the gap and nudged ahead.
But this year, with 150 metres to go, Queen’s found something more and the bowball of each boat moved ahead on the stroke.
Wily NUIG cox Ruadhan Cooke said he did not know which crew had won until the result was announced.
Cooke won his first senior title in 1991 and this is, for the most part, a hardy and experienced NUIG crew, with most of the athletes having now left college life behind. At the upper end, Cormac Folan and Alan Martin have years of international experience; but bowman Eddie Mullarkey is only 18.
Jason Wall, in the number two seat, was a driven man: he has fought back from Guillain-Barre syndrome, which left him debilitated and using a zimmer frame to move around, to be in the boat.
“My first aim was to make this crew. The second was to win the Championships,” he said.
The women’s senior eight final yielded a similarly remarkable result: it was won, and won handsomely, by a composite crew of seven clubs formed just for these championships.
The crew was stroked by Laura D’Urso and featured the cream of Irish sculling talent. In the five seat was Killorglin’s Monika Dukarska, who has just declared for Ireland, eschewing the chance of again representing Poland as she awaits her Irish passport.
Also announcing good news was Sinéad Jennings. The Donegal woman competed while 20 weeks pregnant. Fiance Sam Lynch was happy to impart the news.
Cork’s Marie O’Neill was taking her second title of the day. She was the experienced head in the Cork intermediate coxed four which shocked favourites Skibbereen in their final.
University of Limerick added the men’s intermediate fours title to their intermediate eights crown.
Coleraine club Bann had one big aim: win the junior eights title. For the young men in red, who had set the pace all season, this was the one which mattered.
Skibbereen had impressed in the semis and Portora pushed Bann hard in the final, but Bann had a clear margin over both at the finish.
A crowd from Coleraine surrounded the winning crew at the presentation.
Jenny Campbell, mother of world class sculler Alan Campbell, who represents Britain, said her son had made the breakthrough at this event in 1999, winning the junior 16 single scull.
“It was a turning point for him,” she said. “He said ‘if I can beat all of Ireland then I can take on the world’.”
Peter and Richard Chambers, also stars in the Britain team, were quick to text their congratulations to Bann coach Séamus Reynolds.
Portora’s win in the women’s junior eight was another vindication for a year in which they impressed.
Late in the day, Shannon won the novice coxed four and Queen’s took the women’s coxed four, ensuring that the Championships ended on a good note for a club which had just missed out on the big one – for the second successive year.
