Mangan freshening things up

ROWING:WHAT LINKS bulls, bears, the World Rowing Championships and . . . customised chocolate? The answer is not a what but a who: James Mangan, the director of rowing at University of Limerick.

Mangan has an impressive background in coaching rowers in the US, but he may have registered for the first time on the radar of many Irish rowing people when UL steadily colonised the men’s intermediate eights, fours and pairs titles at the National Championships this season, marking itself out as a club with a big future.

The quiet-spoken coach rates novelty highly as a way to keep athletes fresh, and a little brainstorming yielded the idea of the Bulls and Bears races, which will be part the Castleconnell head of the river on Sunday. The top pairs of the day will be mixed and matched in two eights, with prizes for the winning crew.

The entry for this year’s head is almost exclusively made up of local crews, as rowers prove slow to come out to play after the recent National Championships – indeed the Tullamore Time Trials, scheduled for tomorrow, have had to be cancelled.

Mangan’s stint in the US saw him set up the Saugatuck rowing club in Connecticut, and he took on the US under-23 lightweight programme in 2006 and 2007. He name checks five of the US lightweight team which will compete in the World Championships, which start in New Zealand two weeks from Sunday, as athletes of his.

Only one, however, is really famous: Nick LaCava. The lanky Connecticut man is following in the footsteps of Facebook “co-founders” and fellow rowers the Winklevoss twins by making tons of money from a good idea – in this case customised chocolate.

The company Chocomize was mentioned in the Oprah magazine and LaCava featured in the New York Times last week. The “lightbulb went on” in his head when a “gloop” of mixed sweets turned out to be delicious after they were frozen.

Ireland is sending two adaptive crews to the World Championships. The legs, trunks and arms coxed four crew is made up of Anne O’Donnell (a newcomer to the sport this season), Sarah Caffrey, Shane Ryan and Kevin Du Toit, and will be coxed by Helen Arbunot. Karol Doherty will represent Ireland in the arms and shoulders single scull.