ROWING Three Irish boats advance to semi-finals at Rowing World Cup

All four Irish boats were in action today (May30th) at the second leg of the Rowing World Cup in Lucerne, Switzerland, and a series of good performances saw three of them advance to tomorrow’s semi-finals.

The men’s lightweight four (LM4-) of Paul Griffin, Richard Archibald, Gearoid Towey and Eugene Coakley fared the best of the Irish in the morning heats, finishing second to 2006 world champions China to advance directly tomorrow’s semi-finals.

It was a good performance from the four showing progress on the last regatta in Munich even though the race didn’t go quite to plan, as Gearoid Towey explained; “Our race plan didn’t go as well as we had wanted to; we wanted to be up there right at the beginning but we were quite strong at the end so that was good. We have to put it together the way we want tomorrow though, because the semi-final  is going to be this pace from the word go, so we have use the strength we have in the second half tomorrow again, but we have to put it in, in the first half also. It’s always easier to push on when you’re at the front of the pack rather than pushing into it; the races are too competitive for that.”

The other three Irish boats all contested the evening repechages for a second chance to advance to tomorrow’s semi-finals, after they missed out on the handful of direct semi-final places on offer in this morning’s heats.

The men’s heavyweight pair (M2-) of Sean Casey and Jonno Devlin were first out in the repechages for the Irish, and needed to be in the top two to see semi-final action. The duo raced well, with a strong last quarter in particular, to cross the line in second place behind China, holding off a strong British charge over the final strokes to book their semi-final spot.

Afterwards Jonno Devlin said: “This morning we’d drawn the New Zealand pair and we knew they were going to be a fast pair, we said to be sensible about it with only one to go through (directly to the semi-finals) there’s no point in killing ourselves so it gave us a good platform to work off for the race this evening. We had a good start in the repechage; Sean was stroking the boat really well which made it an easy job just for me to back him up. We came into the last 500metres and just changed gear so we just had a really good solid performance so it’s given us great confidence for the semi-final tomorrow.”

The heavyweight men’s four (M4-); the Irish boat already secured of a starting berth in Beijing, faced a tough morning heat featuring several of the world’s leading crews in which only the top three boats progressed to the semi-finals. The Irish crew of Alan Martin, Cormac Folan, Sean O’Neill and James Wall, placed fifth in that heat leaving them contesting an evening repechage of four crews with the top three to go to the semi-finals. However, owing to the withdrawal of the Czech four from the repechage due to illness the race was cancelled sending the three crews directly to the semi-finals tomorrow.

The men’s lightweight double (LM2x) of Cathal Moynihan and Richard Coakley faced a fiercely competitive repechage which included the reigning world champions; Denmark, and world number four Australia, with only the top two crews to progress to the semi finals. Unsurprisingly, the Australian and Danish crews took the semi-finals spots with the Irish double in fourth behind Austria, which sees them progress to a C final tomorrow. With a final placing of 25th at the last World Cup in Munich a C final placing (places 13-18) will see the duo improve considerably on that mark.
Ends.
Issued on behalf of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union by the Irish Sports Council
 
For Further Information:
Sinéad McElroy, Press Officer to the Irish team, Irish Sports Council; 01-8608804 or 087-6338512 smcelroy@irishsportscouncil.ie
 
Additional Information:
For competition schedule, live results and commentary visit www.worldrowing.com
 
IMAGES: Stock pics of the team are available reproduction fee free from Sportsfile 01-4547400 www.sportsfile.com