THE long running selection process that has kept Ireland's Olympic double scull tied to the stake boat in the run up to Atlanta is expected to be settled today when Director of Coaching, Thor Nilsen, decides which of three scullers will fill the two available seats.
Niall O'Toole, Brendan Dolan and Gearoid Towey yesterday finished two days of final evaluations at Blessington after racing in different combinations against a pace coxless four which qualified for the Olympics last weekend.
The double scull qualified for Atlanta last year but the selection process since has not been without its share of criticism with the suggestion that any gain from the drawn out evaluations has been cancelled out by the time the selected pairing will have lost on the water. Nilsen sympathises to a point and agrees that ideally the section should have been made three or four months ago but points to inconclusive results against international competition.
At Duisberg, O'Toole made two finals partnered by both Dolan and Towey and before the Lucerne regatta at the beginning of June, O'Toole and Dolan were told that third place or better would be enough to secure their seats. They finished last.
Today's decision will allow the double to join the coxless four in Hazewinkel, Belgium, on Monday where the intensive training programme continues until the end of the month. The four's spare man, Neil Darby will have Neptune's Adrian Smith as a training partner. Smith missed earlier testing for a reserve place with bronchitis.
The two Irish boats are already en route to Atlanta and after the finals will probably be sold, says IARU president, Dermot Henihan, half seriously, for the price of the airline tickets back to Dublin. However, one Islandbridge club is already going the extra step and Neptune are set to "realise" their racing assets even before they reach Henley next month.
A line in wall mounted trophies may not show the best return from £25,000 worth of boats and is not likely to add much to the replacement appeal either. Short of exposure in last weekend's sporting pages, Neptune jackknifed their trailer crossed two lanes of speeding traffic and came to rest on the hard shoulder of the M1 for a guest appearance on UK road watch reports.
The crash kit the Sims eight a write off, a second eight needing extensive repairs and a four that club captain Gerry Farrell says will never be used for racing again. "Once they area added up I expect we will be out of pocket by £20 to £25,000 and that's a we get the insurance money.
But with Henley only three weeks away a replacement Sims has already been ordered and Neptune have established themselves as a front runner for the Thames Cup. At the Docklands Regatta in London, only Imperial College and University of London managed to beat Neptune's open eight two crews that Trinity will face in the Temple cup. Neptune's intermediate/novice boat which has struggled to make any mark on the domestic circuit, exceeded expectations by winning Senior 3 and 2 finals within the space of two hours, dispatching Eton and Marlow in the process.
Wallingford and Notts City were the noticeable absentees but opinion at Docklands placed Neptune as the club to beat. Entries for Henley close on Tuesday and to date seven Irish clubs have been given IARU approval.
