TOP 5: Olympic rowing champion Fintan McCarthy remembers his five favourite races

NATIONAL CHAMPION – Getting your name on the championship board that hangs on the wall in the main hall at Skibbereen Rowing Club is a goal for every athlete who rows with the club. I had won national titles before, but winning the men’s senior single sculls at the 2022 Irish Rowing Championships topped the lot. At this point, Paul O’Donovan and myself had won gold at the Olympics and the Worlds, and I know it might not seem as special for people looking in, and it might ‘only’ be the national championships in relation to what we have won, but when we were coming up through the club, the championships were the big thing. 

Back then you could only dream of winning the men’s senior single – but that’s what I did at the nationals in Farran Wood in the summer of 2022. It’s surreal because I was racing Paul as well and I had never beaten him before. I am under no illusions; he has been in Australia, he was working and he wasn’t at full fitness whereas I had a good summer’s training behind me, but to win the men’s senior single for the first time, and be back representing the club, it meant a lot. 

I had Dominic (Casey) and Denise (Walsh) getting me pepped up before the race! I was actually really nervous going out. It felt like a full circle moment – I was back racing at the championships where I had started out as a junior, and I was back in the frame of mind, to go out and win. That was the highlight of my season in 2022. It was nice to get the name up on the board in Skibb for that as well.

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WORLD RECORD – When people think of the Olympics in Tokyo, they think of the A final where Paul and myself won gold, but it’s the semi-final that stands out for me: this is the race where we set the world record in the men’s lightweight double. Setting a world record in rowing is hugely dependent on conditions, and it fell into place that day. Coming into that summer we had some sessions where we would compare our speed against the world record time and we can see, on the days we had good weather, that we were in and around those speeds, and maybe a bit faster sometimes. We knew all year that we had it in us if the right day came. 

In that semi-final it was us and Italy, and we were out in front. I remember it feeling really easy. I kept looking down at the splits: we needed a 1.31 or something, and everytime I looked down at our GPS it was 1.30, 1.31, 1.31, 1.31, so we were hitting the speed with every stroke. I wasn't thinking about it beforehand but coming to the end of the race I was thinking that we could be onto something here. Because it was a semi-final and we were saving what we had for the final, we didn’t have an all-out sprint to the end, so crossing the line I didn’t know for sure, but I said it anyway “that could have been a world record”. We didn't get the time – 6:05.33 – until we came in off the water, and we ended up breaking it by fractions of a second. That was a cool moment, to learn you had set a world record.  We are always comparing ourselves against the world record time in training so from that moment on we were X percentage of the best time ever, which is X percent of ourselves.

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RACING THE CLOCK – The heat at World Cup III in Lucerne last summer was a time trial, and it was something different that we hadn’t experienced at this level before. Okay, we ended up losing the A final in Lucerne and had to settle for silver, but the heat was actually one of our best races in 2023. It was strange because it was a time trial. They were testing out this new racing format just in case conditions are unfair in the future; this was a test so crews would be used to a time-trial format if it ever has to happen again. Paul and myself, in the lightweight double, were going down the course by ourselves. Boats were set off at 30-second intervals, so one boat is in front of you and another behind you. In terms of times we hadn’t a clue what was going on but the boat felt really good. We ended up setting the fastest time in the heats: 6:11.66. It was cool to see everyone else coming down the course single file and we were listening out to see if we were faster than them. It was a different experience to what we are used to. The row itself felt very nice, too.

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WE’RE ON TRACK – I still have the video of this race at the Cork Regatta in June 2018. Jake (Fintan’s twin brother) and myself almost beat Gary and Paul (O'Donovan) in the lightweight double final, but they took us in the last 100 metres. That was Jake and myself’s last year at U23 level, and that race was the first indication that we weren't crazy for doing all this training and for continuing with the sport. Gary and Paul were world champions that year so it was pretty good going from us to be that close; I think we were just a second behind them at the end. In the heat we were against them as well and they hammered us, but both boats made it to the final. 

Paudie Murphy was in the umpire’s launch for the heat, he came into us between the races and said “Jake, you have to stop looking out of the boat, you’re looking out every two strokes!”. For the final I made a rule: Jake was only allowed one look every 500 metres. After 500 metres we were ahead and I saw him have a look, and he caught a bit of water, so I said “you’re not allowed to look any more!” We were giving it everything, but obviously died a death at the end because we were going so hard. That was the first time we felt that we were on the right track. One year later I was in the Irish men’s lightweight double alongside Paul.

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ON TOP OF THE WORLD – I’m picking the A final at the 2019 World Rowing Championships because it was my first world title, and it meant a lot. I was just into the Irish men’s lightweight double with Paul by now, and we had our first regatta together in July 2019: World Cup III in Rotterdam. The Germans had beaten us by a small margin in the final there, so in the camp leading into the Worlds in August – and considering we were a new crew at the time – the target was that we had to get faster.

Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan celebrate winning gold at the 2019 World Rowing Championships in Linz, Austria.

We did an onslaught of training. That was one of my first years training all the way through to the world seniors. Usually we had the U23s and there was a break, but we had an extra couple of months training that year. It was tough and challenging but I loved it because I was in the boat and it was going fast. We made it through all the rounds at the Worlds and we had beaten everyone except Italy because we hadn’t raced them. In the A final we got dropped at the start, and were three seconds down after 500 metres; it was one of our worst starts ever. It was crazy to come back from that, especially when I was so young. I remember thinking for a split-second ‘oh no’, but I put that out of my head. I think we got through Italy after the halfway mark, and it was 700 metres to go and I knew we could be a world champion for the first time. That was a great feeling: my first world title.