What do you do when the parameters of your event have radically shifted after you’ve finished fifth at your second Olympic Games, leaving you unsure whether your body type will be a good fit for it anymore?
Mags Cremen, who was still only 25 after the Paris Games, didn’t panic. She went back to the daily sporting practice that has given her so much joy since she was 14 and just took a beat. With lightweight rowing discontinued as an Olympic event, the double sculler from Cork city wasn’t sure if she would be able, or even want, to make the transition to open weight, a dilemma faced by so many of Rowing Ireland’s world class squad last year.
The key was not to rush into anything. Cremen still had a year to finish on her Sports Studies degree in UCC so, most mornings, she sat into the single she had homed in the Marina, to maintain her equilibrium by tapping into the familiar dance between air, water and shell.
By Christmas, her famously competitive streak had kicked in.
Realising she simply couldn’t stay away, Cremen returned to the national elite squad and soon the two-time European and World medallist with Aoife Casey found herself paired in a new heavyweight double with Zoe Hyde. That’s a Cork and a Kerry woman in very close proximity. How soon did she realise they could overlook county rivalries?
“Pretty quickly. We laugh that I’m very much a type B personality and Zoe is very much type A. She’s so organised, always punctual and data-driven, while I’m more of free soul and go with the flow but we definitely complement each other.
“In fairness I still work really hard which is one of my best and worst qualities because I sometimes work almost too hard.”
Two seasons in, their synchronicity is coming. They took bronze at World Cup 1 in Seville in May and just missed out another, finishing fourth in the blue riband World Cup III last month.
“We were a good bit back in the B final in Lucerne last year so, while we were disappointed not to make another podium, it feels like we’ve stepped up an awful lot since.”
Their big focus and barometer for 2026 is next month’s World Championships (August 24-30, in Amsterdam). They just missed out the A final by one place last year.
Yet it was another performance at 2025’s Worlds that convinced Cremen she could successfully make this transition.
“We’ve similar fiery racing styles, it’s so fun!”
she exclaimed after herself and Olympic champion Fintan McCarthy swept to gold in the new ‘mixed’ doubles event. Just two days after first sitting in a boat together, that confirmed their kindred rowing spirit and beast modes. But Cremen took something far more important away from Shanghai than a ‘fun’ world title; a new conviction that, at 5’ 7”,
she could be successful in open weight.
“Obviously Fintan had won a medal at heavyweight the year before but both of us were former lightweights. Winning meant a lot to me because it made me believe that I could get on a heavyweight podium, that my weight or height wasn’t going to stop me. It showed you don’t have to be big to win, that you can be fast whatever size you are.”
Surely the jump to open weight has involved much harder training loads and enforced bulking up?
“No. The training we are doing now is very similar because Dominic (Casey, Rowing Ireland’s head coach) is still coaching us and I haven’t put on a whole pile of weight either. I’m getting PBs just by fuelling properly. I can eat freely now.
“As a lightweight, while you know you have to fuel for training, you’d always have it in the back of your head if you needed to make weight in six weeks’ time or whatever. When I see how much I’ve come on, at open weight, I definitely underestimated the toll that was taking on my body.”
She also credits the input of Kiwi physiologist Lorenz Kissling who joined Rowing Ireland a year ago.
“The team never had a full-time physiologist before and Lorenz’s ability to balance aerobic training with the right intensity has made a big difference.
“It’s about finding the perfect balance between working hard and not working too hard. As a lightweight and, as a young athlete, I would have felt I needed to try as hard as I possibly could in every single session.
“Now, with experience, I’ve realised that you need to do the easy stuff easy and the hard stuff hard and recover well. It’s about training smartly.”
“Honestly I was allergic to rowing!”
“It was daunting that first day. If you join an athletics club at least you know you can run whereas, with rowing, you’ve no idea how to start. As a teenager, I felt so uncool. No one knew much about Irish rowing back then whereas clubs are so full now they’re turning people away.
“What I loved was how you could feel the progress straight away. There was maybe only four of us to one coach who responded immediately to how hard you worked, something that didn’t happen in hockey.
“Obviously there was technique to be learnt and it was very scary stepping into a boat at first, but the harder and smarter I worked the better I got.”
Rowing also proved an invaluable support at a devastating time in her young life. Cremen lost her mother to cancer 10 years ago, when she was just 17.
“After the funeral I actually went straight to the rowing club. Apart from my dad and my sister, that was my comfort place, my second home, and I was so lucky to have that community around me.
“In Paris, because it was so close, I’d say 100 people travelled to support me. I think that’s very much what kept me going after it as well, the joy that whole experience gave to my family and friends. People still talk about Paris. It was basically the best week of my life!
“I just wasn’t ready to give rowing up, not just the lifestyle and the people. I also had an itch to discover my untapped potential as a heavyweight, to find out how much making weight was setting me back before.”
This summer Cremen and Hyde’s potential is really starting to show.