KIERAN McCARTHY caught up with double Olympic champion rower Fintan McCarthy to find out how a man barely heavier than his lightweight days is hanging with the giants?

‘I’M not that much bigger than my winter weight as a lightweight!’ Fintan McCarthy quips, when asked if he’s gone up in clothes size since his jump up to heavyweight.

‘I haven’t put on much weight at all, so it’s not been that different,’ he adds, and he has the evidence to back up his claim.

The Skibbereen rower, standing five-foot ten inches tall, teamed up with six-foot six-inch Philip Doyle – a giant, in comparison – to win bronze in the Irish men’s double sculls at the World Rowing Championships in Shanghai in September.

‘I am racing at about 77 kilos which is not very heavy at all compared to some of the guys there. I think when Phil and myself raced in the (World) final he was probably about 92 or 93 kilos, so that goes to show the difference,’ Fintan points out. And this is where it gets interesting: how is a two-time Olympic lightweight champion, barely heavier than those lightweight days hanging with giants?

‘It hasn’t been a huge physical change but we have also been figuring out if it is a good idea to have gone that far with it? Do we need to gain a bit more muscle mass to go faster? Is that worth more speed to us? Or is it better to stay relatively light and work on strength and fitness?’ Fintan muses – all questions he is hoping to answer in the journey ahead as he unlocks more of his potential.

‘It’s been fun to learn that there are no limits,’ he says, describing his first year at heavyweight level as ‘grand’. But Fintan has different standards to most. Having ruled the world of the lightweight double alongside Paul O’Donovan, there was a ruthlessness to this Skibb dream team who won back-to-back Olympic gold and three World titles together.

Fintan McCarthy and Philip Doyle strike a pose ahead of the Worlds where they won bronze in the men's double.

Stepping into heavyweight – where, as the name suggests, the rowers are bigger, taller, stronger – expectations naturally have to be adjusted. But Fintan’s haul from 2025 offers encouragement for the next Olympic cycle in the build-up to Los Angeles in 2028.

Partnering Konan Pazzaia, together they won bronze medals at the European Rowing Championships in May and at World Rowing Cup II in Lucerne in the summer. Two medals from two regattas swelled at the Worlds in Shanghai when Fintan added two more medals to an incredible collection – after winning bronze in the men’s double with Philip, he teamed up with Mags Cremen to win World gold in the mixed double.

For the 99.9 percent, that represents a brilliant return. For Fintan, it’s ‘grand’ because he feels there’s much more to follow as he unlocks his full potential at this level.

‘What surprised me most was how competitive I was against our guys pretty early on,’ he says, making waves in a usually tricky post-Olympic year. ‘I know everyone has had a bit of an off-season, but numbers-wise and fitness-wise I don’t think I was in a brilliant place this past year. I was doing alright. I wouldn’t have said I was any fitter or stronger than in my lightweight days, yet. So to be mixing it up with the lads, getting some pretty good times on the water during the summer, it’s promising,’ he adds, as he figures out how to reach beast mode at heavyweight level.

Fintan McCarthy, and Konan Pazzala celebrate winning bronze at the World Cup regatta in Lucerne.

Alongside Paul O’Donovan in the lightweight double, their average crew weight was not allowed to exceed 70kg, but with that restriction removed, Fintan – and Paul, when he returns to the water after a busy 2025 off it – can now work towards becoming the very best rowing version of himself.

‘At lightweight with racing we’d usually be starving going into the week of a regatta, but this allows for that extra bit before the race – it could be part of that difference of getting fast as lightweights to fast as heavyweights,’ he points out.

‘You can fully fuel after travelling, you can get in some hard training closer to the races and recover better, so that’s been pretty good learning.’

So now, with no limits to slow him down, the 29-year-old is relishing the challenge to discover how fast he can actually go. There’s no handbrake anymore. It’s empowering: the quest to push yourself to a new level.

‘That’s how I am trying to look at it,’ Fintan says.

‘You get to a certain point when you are lightweight, and you can only be so fit and strong at 70 kilos. Every year it was about getting the body to that point and maintaining it from April or May onwards. Whereas now it’s about getting to May, then pushing on, and then pushing on again for the World championships.

‘You saw that last season. We got to the Europeans and Lucerne and there was good speed with Konan and I. But we had to raise the bar again to medal at the World champs. And we did, and I was in with Phil.

‘Even if lightweight was still around, I would have pushed on anyway. It’s nice, in a sense, to have been forced into doing something different, and push the limits a little bit more. I’m glad that has happened because I have learned about how fast I actually can go. When we were winning lightweight events we were racing people our size, so it’s been nice to challenge myself in another way and realise that there are no limits, only what you put on yourself, whether that is weight restriction or a mental thing of how fast you think you can go.’

As 2026 begins, Fintan will look back on the past year as setting up base camp in his journey to reach new heights. By his own admission, he didn’t train ‘super hard’ or do anything that he hadn’t done before, so there are a lot of positives to take forward.

Fintan McCarthy and his twin brother Jake won the men's senior double at the 2025 Irish Rowing Championships.

This is a good starting point: winning medals at heavyweight without really pushing the boat out just yet.

He hails the coaching structure put in place by Rowing Ireland as ‘the dream team’. Long-time head coach Dominic Casey needs no introduction, while the addition of another quality coach from Skibbereen Rowing Club this year, Denise Walsh, has been a boost; they add the famous Skibb mindset on top of technique expertise. Eamonn Flanagan and Ed Hartery push the strength and conditioning boundaries. Fintan’s full of praise for senior performance physiologist Lorenz Kissling.

Add in Laura O’Mahony  and Arthur Dunne on nutrition, Ciara Harte as high-performance operations manager, Niall O’Carroll as the new head of High Performance, Clara O’Brien and more, and the pieces of the jigsaw are falling nicely into place, as they collectively work to see how far they can go.

‘Now that we have those support staff in place it has really turned into a bit of a project, to try and figure out what that secret sauce is, and to see if we can really turn up the dial on it. Because it is obviously working,’ Fintan says.

‘At lightweight, we didn’t have a full grasp on what the difference was, and now we need to dig into a bit more: what is making us so fast? We can harness that, and use it,’ he adds, ready to attack 2026 and see where he ends up.

Fintan’s experienced enough to know how fast rowing can change, too, so he wants to put himself in the best position for a boat heading towards LA 2028.

Ideally, the double – he feels that suits him the best, and the medals prove that.

With his first year at heavyweight behind him, it’s time to push on, and continue to unlock his true potential.