Work behind the scenes paying off

ROWING:IT MAY be seen as a small sport, but the depth and breadth of rowing in Ireland can sometimes astound. Anyone lucky enough to be in the Dining Hall of Trinity College on Friday night could not but be carried along on the buoyancy generated by the huge attendance celebrating Dublin University Boat Club and its achievements.

The Minister for Sport, Martin Cullen, has spoken of rowing as one of the sports which could yield a medal come the Olympic Games in London 2012, and he met representatives of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union on Wednesday. The meeting was "hugely positive" according to Tony Dooley, the president of the union.

Add in the imminent appointment of a performance director at national level, and the potential of the sport at the top tier can be grasped.

However, such peaks are only reached after long days of hard graft behind the scenes. Pat McInerney of St Michael's in Limerick has spent the last year organising coaching courses throughout the country, and well over 100 people have come through the course for level one qualification.

McInerney, who is the full-time coaching education officer for the union, points out that quite a few of these people were already coaching and waiting for a chance to do this sort of course. By next spring he hopes to have put in place a level two course.

McInerney did a survey of elite athletes in the Irish system going back to the Garda crews in the 1970s and 1980s, right up until the recent participants in the Beijing Olympics. "Basically what I was trying to find out was what they were doing as youngsters that made them into good athletes."

There was a huge range of responses, and he hopes to draw on this and the best practice from other countries such as New Zealand and Canada to "put together a model of what kids should be doing to reach the Olympic podium".

Meanwhile, Lisa Dilleen of Tribesmen won gold in the junior heavyweight section of the British Indoor Rowing Championships in Birmingham on Sunday in a fine time of seven minutes 6.3 seconds. Laura D'Urso of City of Derry was fourth.

In the adaptive events in Birmingham, Ireland had two more wins: Shane Ryan won the legs, trunk and arms open event, while Castleconnell clubmate Aron O'Dowd won the junior equivalent.