Daire Lynch and Philip Doyle took the shade of an umbrella in the mixed zone. Beads of sweat from their semi-final triumph had been overlaid with sweat from the warm-down and topped up with sweat from just standing still in the pulverising midday sun.
Temperatures at Vaires-sur-Marne climbed to a stifling 37 degrees on Tuesday, but they had come from a four-week training camp in Italy where they said the humidity was worse and the breeze didn’t rise to a puff. In any case, they have arrived here prepared for anything.
Lynch and Doyle came into this regatta as second seeds in the Men’s Double Sculls and they franked that status again in Tuesday’s semi-final. They hit the front in the third quarter and established a commanding position over the closing 200 metres, holding off the United States and New Zealand without any fuss. Germany, the early leaders, blew up.
“It went pretty much the exact way we thought it would go,” said Doyle. “We did what we wanted to do, we executed well. We knew there would be a couple of cheeky lads who would go off like the clappers at the start. And sure we know if they’re going to go off and do silly things, they’ll pay for it later in the race. We just have to have the confidence that we are going to make them pay.
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“My plan stops here, to be honest. In Tokyo I had notions of silverware [alongside Ronan Byrne] and it didn’t go to plan so you reel back your expectations a little. I’ve always been fairly transparent that I want to make it to the medal final. And if we make it to the medal final that I’d have the confidence in us as a boat to perform, whatever our performance is – whether it’s sixth or first – it’ll be our best.”
Their semi-final was marginally faster than the race won by Netherlands, who were the pre-Olympic favourites for the gold medal. The Dutch have only been beaten once over the last two seasons, and on that occasion one of the crew was sick. Lynch and Doyle, though, have been steadily building since last September, when they took a bronze at the World Championships at the end of their first full season together.
“We knew we were in a good position coming in [to the Olympics],” says Lynch. “Before the worlds last year you don’t really know where other countries are going to be at. We got beaten in our heat. We didn’t win a single race last year [in the worlds]. We’re showing good signs that we’ve timed it fairly well. The last block before we came here was probably our best one yet. Hopefully we can bring that into the final.”
For the other two Irish boats in the water there was no happy outcome. Zoe Hyde and Alison Bergin finished fifth in the semi-final of the women’s double sculls and never really left that position throughout the race.
“I’m disappointed, but we put out our best performance at the end of the day,” said Bergin. “We’ve still got one more race to go [in the B final] so, we’ll give it another go on Thursday.”
The women’s four (Emily Hegarty, Natalie Long, Eimear Lambe and Imogen Magner) finished fourth in their repechage, with just two places available in the final. They climbed to third at one stage in the middle of the race, but they had no kick in the closing 500 metres. Ireland won a bronze in this event at the Tokyo Olympics, with Hegarty and Lambe the only survivors from that crew in the boat this time.
