A day after Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy won their second lightweight double sculls Olympic gold medal, Belgium’s Tim Brys finished fourth in the heavyweight men’s single sculls final.
In Tokyo, Brys had finished in fifth in a lightweight boat and in the intervening years made the switch to heavyweight. It is what O’Donovan and McCarthy are now considering, a physiological and technical transformation that could get them on to the podium in Los Angeles.
The lightweight class in which the pair won their gold medals is no longer an Olympic event, leaving Ireland holding a little bit of history. O’Donovan and McCarthy’s lightweight boat was the last to win an Olympic lightweight title.
Now, if they want to pursue a third gold medal, they must both get bigger and challenge the heavyweight crews. The race in LA, breaking with tradition, will take place over 1,500m, not the usual 2,000m that the Irish boat has been contesting for years.
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It’s another adjustment as the two prepare to gain weight and transfer into a different kind of race. It’s a demanding change even allowing for the generational talent O’Donovan and McCarthy possess.
However, following the Irish win on Friday in the Vaires-Sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, high performance director Antonio Maurogiovanni was already thinking about LA’s challenge to his most successful crew.
“It is always going to be a big challenge but someone like Paul, someone like Fintan, you know, lightweight that wins the gold, when they win the gold, usually they can be in the final of a heavy, an open event,” he said. “So that is the starting point. Now we see the way in which they put [on] more weight, become stronger. So, it all needs to be done to the plan.”
Already, the blank canvas is looking good. Just after the pair won their gold medal in Tokyo, they took part in the Henley Regatta, where there is no lightweight class.
Surrendering a clear weight advantage to the British heavyweight pair of Matthew Haywood and Samuel Meijer, U-23 world champions at the time, the Irish crew won the race. O’Donovan also raced at heavyweight or open class this year with no real adjustments and competing as a lightweight.
Much of the transition will come down to adding the optimum amount of weight and choosing a boat that suits, a balancing act that will take time. All the factors will be addressed such as hull shape, how the boat sits in the water, weight to speed efficiency and what kind of output the pair can achieve. Already O’Donovan has proved his worth on a machine called an ergometer (erg) that measures physical performance.
He is one of the few rowers in the world that has scored under six minutes for 2,000m on the erg and it puts him in a class with just two others, Danish rower Henrik Stephansen, whose time of 5.56.2 is a world record and Frenchman Jérémie Azou. O’Donovan’s PB on the erg is 5.58.2.
But adding muscle also adds weight and getting it wrong could mean the net speed of a heavier athlete in the boat could be slower than a lighter athlete. Bigger, stronger heavyweight rowers must pull bigger, heavier bodies through the water and that takes more energy. Making the transition from lightweight to heavyweight is an issue of finding the balance.
O’Donovan is 70kg and 5ft 10in, while Valent Sinkovic, one of the Croatian brothers who won the gold medal in Paris in the men’s pair just before the Irish boat won theirs, is 6ft 1in and 92kg, while brother Martin is 6ft 2in and 92kg.
But O’Donovan and McCarthy also have one other strength which makes the complex equation easier for them than most and that is mindset. Attitude may be the most important ingredient in the transition. Both rowers understand elite sport and how to unlock full potential, probably better than all their competitors.
“It’s not impossible,” says Maurogiovanni. “We have here [in Paris] a single from a lightweight three years ago from Belgium. Now, he’s in the final of the men’s single and that means that it’s possible.”
It’s just the kind of green light the gold medal pair need.
