Rowing

About Rowing

Rowing has become one of Ireland's most successful modern Olympic sports, driven in large part by the Skibbereen rowing club, though the breakthrough followed years of near misses: the lightweight coxless four of Neville Maxwell, Tony O'Connor, Derek Holland and Sam Lynch finished agonisingly fourth at Atlanta 1996, missing out on bronze by under a second.

Ireland's first Olympic rowing medal came at Rio 2016, when brothers Gary and Paul O'Donovan won silver in the lightweight double sculls. Paul went one better at Tokyo 2020, winning gold in the same boat alongside Fintan McCarthy, the Games at which Aifric Keogh, Eimear Lambe, Fiona Murtagh and Emily Hegarty also won bronze in the women's four, the first Olympic rowing medal for Irish women.

O'Donovan and McCarthy retained their lightweight double sculls title at Paris 2024, while Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch added bronze in the men's double sculls the same Games, Ireland's most successful Olympics for the sport.

Rowing is raced over 2,000 metres on flat water, in boats ranging from the single scull to eight-person crews, in sculling boats (two oars per rower) and sweep boats (one oar per rower), with lightweight and openweight categories for much of the men's and women's programme.