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Team Ireland rowers Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch have won a brilliant Olympic bronze medal in the final of the Men’s Double Sculls (M2x) at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
In doing the Irish duo have won Team Ireland’s fourth medal at these Olympic Games, after Mona McSharry claimed bronze, Daniel Wiffen gold, and Kellie Harrington secured at least a bronze.
Prior the today’s performance from Doyle and Lynch Ireland have won three Olympic rowing medals before; one gold (LM2x Tokyo), one silver (LM2x Rio), and one bronze (W4- Tokyo).
In winning bronze today this is the first ever heavyweight Olympic medal for Ireland so a place in the history books awaits for these incredible Irish oarsmen.
In a final contested in somewhat faster conditions than have been seen over the last number of days with a slight tailwind at Vaires-sur-Marne, the favoured Dutch crew were beaten into silver by a brilliant performance from the Romanian double who took the race to the field to claim gold, with the Irish outsprinting the Americans to claim the coveted bronze medal.
Banbridge’s Philip Doyle (Belfast Boat Club) and Clonmel’s Daire Lynch (Clonmel Rowing Club) have been competing together in the Men’s Double since the 2023 European Championships, and have been on an international podium four times since; Bronze at the 2023 World Cup III and World Championships, Bronze at the 2024 World Cup I and Gold at World Cup III. Doyle and Lynch also won gold in the final World Cup this season which was the first ever gold medal for a heavy men’s crew in Irish history. Doyle and Lynch are coached by men’s head coach Fran Keane.
The Tokyo Olympics was the first time a Men’s (Heavyweight) Double competed for Ireland. At those Games Philip Doyle and Ronan Byrne contested the event together and finished fourth in the B Final; 10th place overall. At the time Daire Lynch travelled to Tokyo with the team as the reserve rower, having narrowly missed out on qualification in the Men’s Single.
Speaking after the medal ceremony, conducted in front of a loud Irish contingent in the grandstand, Clonmel man Lynch, who is competing at his first Olympics said: “It’s tough, it’s an Olympic final, anything can happen. We know the Romanians were dangerous, like they scraped through the semi-final, realistically they shouldn’t have got through that semi-final and we knew they’d be dangerous because they’re very very good, they won the Europeans by eight seconds I think so they were going to be a big threat coming into this.
“We were posting fastest times, heat and semi and obviously then you’re a bit disappointed when you get bronze but I genuinely don’t think there’s anything else we could have done there so we have to be happy with it. It’ll sink in fairly soon once we get time to relax a bit.”
Doyle, a qualified Doctor from Banbridge, who has taken time off from his hospital job in Cork added: “I went to bed last night thinking we might win the thing to be honest but to be honest to come away with an Olympic medal you can never be disappointed. I made a little mistake there at the end; bit of a neck injury seized up on me in the last 100 metres but it’s because we pushed the body to the limit; it shows that you’re at the limit and luckily we had enough work done that we could recover and then come across the line.
“ I’m not sure we would have got the Dutch but maybe we would have put a bit more pressure on them and they would have made a mistake but you know, as I say this is the pinnacle, this is where you have to put it all on the line so we went at about 250m earlier than we usually do, pushed hard and made some calls.
“ There wasn’t even too many calls actually, I think we were just working off each other and feeling each other’s legs and it was just intuition the whole way down. Obviously in the double it’s about synchronicity and working together and there’s no point in somebody putting in 110% and somebody else putting in 90, you have to put in the exact 106 point whatever each and hope that it works out. We saw the Spanish drop back, we saw the others dropping back, we were wondering why the Romanians weren’t dropping back and they just had a stormer so yeah phenomenal! Phenomenal day, phenomenal course, great experience!’
31-year-old Doyle took up rowing in 2014 while studying medicine in Queens University and combined it with work as a doctor during the global pandemic. From Clonmel in Tipperary 26-year-old Daire Lynch is a recent Economics graduate from Yale University.