Cork rowers Fintan and (right) Jake McCarthy. Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
The good standing of Irish international rowing was reflected at the huge Head of the Charles regatta in Boston as athletes from these shores brought home three sets of medals over the weekend.
The off-season event draws thousands of spectators to autumnal Boston and allows women and men who are rivals through the international season to team up at the spectacular venue.
The McCarthy twins, Fintan and Jake, took silver in the directors’ challenge men’s quads today. The Skibbereen men were joined in the boat by Niels van Zandweghe of Ghent in Belgium and Jamie Copus, a United States international who represented British college Oxford Brookes. A strong French crew claimed the gold.
If Skibbereen took the two seats in the centre of the men’s quadruple, in the women’s championship eights, one fancied crew actually took on the name Skibbereen RC.
This eight was a who’s who of lightweight internationals. Imogen Grant, half of the outstanding British lightweight double which took gold at the Paris Olympic Games, stroked the crew, while Aoife Casey of Skibbereen and Margaret Cremen of UCC were chosen in the two and four seats.
However, the internationals’ party was crashed by three crews from big colleges in the United States. Casey and Cremen had won bronze in the women’s championship double in Boston on Saturday, the same day that Paul O’Donovan sculled aggressively to clinch bronze in the men’s championship single.