If it was any other sport, they would have had their faces splashed all over the newspapers and would have been on satellite television several times by now.
Canoeists can be a modest lot, but hardly more so than Jim Morrissey (30) of Galway and cocanoeist, Mick O'Meara (33) of Waterford, who have just won perhaps the toughest and most prestigious race in Europe.
The pair beat over 100 rival crews from 12 countries earlier this month in the 125-mile non-stop Devizes to Westminster challenge.
The race with 76 portages around the locks of the Kennet and Avon Canal and the Thames is regarded as one of the premier marathon kayak events worldwide. There has only been one previous Irish win in the race's 52 years, recorded by Jim Kennedy in 1983.
Kennedy recently completed the "Paddle for Peace" journey by kayak from Enniskillen, via the Erne Waterway and the Shannon, to Limerick.
The Irish K2 paddlers recorded a time of 17 hours, 51 minutes and 30 seconds, some 17 minutes faster than the second crew, a British pair.
The success crowned a remarkable year for Morrissey, who works with the Irish Seaweed Industry Organisation in NUI Galway. Recently he and two others cut the time for a kayak crossing of the Irish Sea to 11 hours and six minutes.
Morrissey began his paddling career with Dollymount Sea Scouts in Dublin, and has completed six Devizes to Westminster races to date. His brother, Tim, came 11th in this year's single event of the marathon.
Success in our Liffey Descent has been "elusive" so far, Jim says, after 14 years of "fibreglass carnage" on the river's weirs.
Currently, Morrissey is training on the Corrib to make the Irish Marathon Canoe Team, and hopes to represent Ireland at the event.
O'Meara, from the 180 Kayak Club in Waterford, is one of our top white-water racing canoeists and has at least half a dozen Liffey Descent wins to his credit.
In 1990 he was a member of a five-man team which completed the fastest circumnavigation of this island by kayak, in just 33 days.
Four years later he linked up with several others to undertake an arduous circumnavigation of the treacherous Icelandic coast, but had to cut it short when time ran out after 1,200 miles.
Three years ago O'Meara came third in Devizes to Westminster along with Brian Fanning. A regular visitor to the Saltees, he is known to be an accomplished singer and plays guitar "like a good thing".