ROWING: Deep into the evening on the sun-splashed final day of the National senior and intermediate rowing championsips at Blessington on Saturday, 23-year-old Skibbereen man Eugene Coakley won the final race of the day, the senior single sculls final. He took off at a terrific rate and left the favourite, Neptune's Seán Jacob, in his wake. Indeed another Skibbereen man, Paul O'Sullivan, finished second and Jacob third.
As a motif for the championships, the most open in years and full of surprises, its final race was perfect. Neptune, Ireland's most lauded club, did not win a single title - the first time since 1982 they have not won a senior or intermediate title, although Albert Maher had been part of the composite senior quadruple which won on Friday.
The senior eight title had also gone to a composite crew, backboned by NUIG, with an oarsman from UCC (Eamonn Joyce), Tribesmen (Padraig Bracken) and Offaly (Padraic Hussey) on board. Queen's University took second from Neptune, who had to make changes in their crew after stroke Tony O'Connor cried off.
The elite oarsman complained of a worryingly flat performance in the coxed four, and is due to undergo medical tests today, putting in doubt the defence of the world title he holds at lightweight double scull with Gearóid Towey.
NUIG had won that coxed four final too, again coxed by Maedhbh Boyle, and with Dave Mannion, Paul Giblin, Jonny Naughton and Alan Martin, who won the coxless four on Friday, completing the second leg of an admirable treble.
Skibbereen's impressive pillar-to-post win in the women's eight also set up a record for two of their oarswomen, Grace O'Brien and Karen Hickey, both 17-year-old schoolgirls. They won seven national titles this year, at junior, intermediate and senior level. The club brought its own record of titles to 71 - they also won the women's coxless four title on Saturday - with coach Dominic Casey involved in 69 of those.
Commercial also had a good weekend, winning the women's quadruple scull with a crew which contained two juniors and also prevailing in one of the best races of the championships, when Siobhán Jacob won the senior single scull, reaping a big dividend for tactically hanging off the lead, which was disputed by Offaly's Joanne Moran and Commercial's Becky Quinn, until the last 500 metres.
Moran, a 21-year-old pharmacy student at Sunderland University, had been one of the revelations of the weekend, winning the intermediate single in fine style and the senior double with clubmate Níamh Ní Chéilleachair.
The all-star men's double of Sam Lynch of St Michael's and Niall O'Toole of Commercial had set the regatta alight early on Saturday. The world champions at lightweight single scull from 2001 and 1991 looked like a crew with years of experience as they swept to a three-length victory over Belfast Rowing Club in second.
Both, however, played down the prospect of teaming up again in this Olympic event, as both tend to push the envelope at the upper end of the lightweight category.
Lynch's younger brother Hughie was pipped for the intermediate single scull title by Brian Young in one of the closest finishes of the championships, and Commercial also provided the crowd with a stirring finish in the men's intermediate eight, where they beat University of Limerick by a half a length.
