Trinity beat UCD in an extraordinarily close men’s senior eights final at the University Championships of Ireland at the National Rowing Centre.
The DUBC men led coming into the closing stages, but UCD gained on them metre by metre but just fell short of catching their rivals.
Trinity’s American coach, Richard Ruggieri, is on a roll just now. Last month his his top crew beat UCD in the Gannon Cup colours race. He credited the upswing of form to “good team atmosphere” and said he was impressed by the racing at the championships and the number of colleges that claimed at least one win.
NUIG were impressive winners of the women’s senior eights, and the combination of their women’s and men’s crews saw them crowned overall champions.
The Wylie Cup for men, which is calculated on eights’ wins, went to Trinity, and the equivalent prize for women, the Bank of Ireland Trophy, to NUIG.
The UCD men’s senior four, with U-23 internationals in David O’Malley, Shane Mulvaney and Andrew Goff, won. Goff, however, was beaten by international team-mate Fintan McCarthy of UCC in the men’s senior single sculls.
UCC also won the women’s single sculls through Selma Bouanane, while Kealan Mannix of the University of Limerick won the men’s intermediate single sculls.
Three Ireland boats will go in finals at the Memorial Paolo d’Aloja international regatta in Italy on Saturday.
On Friday, Sanita Puspure won her heat of the single sculls with over a second to spare over Milda Valciukaite of Lithuania, an Olympic bronze medallist in the double in 2016. Emily Hegarty and Aifric Keogh qualified for the ‘A’ Final of the pair with third in their heat, while Monika Dukarska and Aileen Crowley won their exhibition race in the double.
