FINTAN McCarthy says he is the fittest he has ever been.

‘It’s more a fact than a feeling,’ the two-time Olympic rowing champion explains, and the numbers back it up.

‘I mainly notice it in training. You’d be putting out numbers you haven’t really seen before and thinking, “God, this could be a bit too hard here,” and then you check your heart rate and realise you’re actually tracking quite well and still have a bit left in the tank.’

The data tells the story.

‘Doing a 20k paddle still kind of feels the same every time. You might just be a little bit faster, or your heart rate might be a little lower, or it feels slightly easier to hold the speed,’ he says.

‘It all accumulates slowly enough that you don’t really notice it until two, three or four months later when you realise you’re moving quicker.’

Now, as McCarthy opens his international season at World Rowing Cup I in Seville this weekend, the Skibbereen rower feels primed to kick on in his second full campaign at heavyweight level.

Ironically, a back injury in January that kept him off the water may have helped bring him to this point.

Missing the trials meant an Irish men’s quad crew was formed without McCarthy, but that also opened the door for him to race the men’s single sculls in Seville.

‘After I got injured I was on the bike for a long time and I think it has actually stood to me fitness-wise. I haven’t a whole pile of rowing done, but I’d say I’m probably in the best shape I’ve ever been in,’ he explains.

‘All my numbers and stuff are tracking really well. The bike has stood to me a good bit, so now it’s just about getting those reps in on the water to prep for this week.

‘But I think we’ve done so much of it now that it comes back quicker than it would have in the earlier years.’

The time spent in the gym on the bike has helped McCarthy since he got back on the water.

‘I’ve definitely seen all my lower-intensity stuff come up a good bit this year, but that’s probably because I was doing so many hours on the bike while I couldn’t row. It was just more training volume, more time, and obviously being able to eat enough to maintain that volume,’ he says.

‘So the base fitness has really improved, which is a good place to start, especially in the small boat because the race is a bit longer.

‘Although I haven’t had much time in the boat, it’s an area I wanted to work on anyway, so in a strange way the injury gave me the opportunity to really zone in on that. It was kind of a case of, if I can’t do anything else, at least I’m going to tick this one off the list.’

A quick check on McCarthy’s age requires a double-take. The Aughadown man is turning 30 later this year.

He laughs when quizzed if he’s ready to say goodbye to his 20s, but in rowing terms he’s approaching his peak years.

‘I think because rowing is so endurance-based, you kind of just improve with age because you’ve more training years and more training hours under the belt. You probably don’t really see it tail off until midway through your 30s. A lot of people row well into their late 30s, even early 40s sometimes,’ McCarthy explains.

‘So I think it’s just a case of continuously trying to improve and then, if that day ever comes, crossing that bridge when you get to it.

‘But at the moment it’s nice to still be seeing PBs and getting fitter and faster, even at my ripe old age of 29!’

Everything is trending upwards right now. The boat feels good. The biomechanics feedback has been encouraging. He feels good, too. Now it’s time to put all that to work in the men’s single sculls at this weekend’s World Cup regatta.

McCarthy made his name in the lightweight double alongside Paul O’Donovan as they rowed into the history books. Moving into the heavyweight world for the next Olympic cycle, McCarthy’s success last year all came in a double – proof that he can make an impact in the world of rowing giants.

For various reasons, potential double partners like Paul O’Donovan and Philip Doyle aren’t available right now, so this is a chance to race in a single.

‘We do a lot of training in singles, so I thought it would be cool to test it out that way,’ McCarthy says.

‘In my opinion anyway, if you can row well in the single, you can row well in any boat.

‘It’s the boat where you really learn exactly how your movements affect the boat. You can feel every mistake, but you can also feel every good stroke as well. So you get a much better response to how you’re rowing.

‘In bigger boats, you don’t always know whether a change is coming from you or someone else making the boat go faster.

‘But when it’s only you in there, you know pretty much straight away whether something you’re doing is working or not. So it’s a steep learning curve, but it happens fairly quickly once you know your way around the boat.

‘Paul and I used to do a lot of training in singles, so when we got back into the double we both kind of knew what makes a boat move well. He might say, “Try this,” or I might bring something to him, and we’d test different things.

‘That applies across all combinations, not just me and Paul. So I think that’s definitely something that helps going forward.’

Rowing aside, McCarthy is relishing the challenge of racing against the world’s best rowers, like Olympic single scull champion Oliver Zeidler from Germany.

‘I’ll be racing Olympic and world medallists in the single scull. So just seeing how I compare to them will be really interesting. It also gives us another data point when we’re looking at what might work back home in other combinations,’ he explains.

‘It might show us what we’re already doing well in order to compete against those big guys, and then maybe we can bring that into every boat we’ve got.

‘So it’s an interesting challenge, but there’s a lot to learn from it too.’

With Olympic qualification up for grabs next year, McCarthy wants to make more strides this season, so he’s in the best position to take whatever opportunities come his way, and whatever boat he ends up in.

Right now, it’s the single sculls, and it could stay that way until after World Cup III.

‘For me, I’m definitely just focused on this right now and hopefully it informs some of those decisions later in the year,’ he adds, hoping his good feelings will lead to something more tangible in Seville this weekend.