Ireland’s rowers have taken to the water again – Sanita Puspure and the pair of Shane O’Driscoll and Mark O’Donovan training at the National Rowing Centre – and coaches who hope to be in the Ireland system for the next four years are dusting off their CVs.

Contracts have been offered to Morten Espersen, the outgoing high performance director, in a new role as high performance lead, and Dominic Casey as high performance coach.

The advertisements for another coach in the Ireland squad will go up in the next few weeks, once the two lead roles have been finalised.

Rowing Ireland chief executive Hamish Adams said it would be an open competition, but "I would like to think we would have strong domestic interest in the roles we want to fill."

Coaching conference

Espersen and Casey will head the line-up at the annual Coaching Conference in Dublin on October 15th.

There will be a workshop with “Olympic athletes and coaches” – a moniker which carries much more weight after the successes in Rio.

The egm to tidy up the name of the registered company which runs the sport here will also be held at the venue.

It is understood that Claire Lambe is set to compete at the Irish Open on October 8th, the first stage of the high performance programme for the season ahead.

The Olympic finalist, who has been promoting rowing in schools in Ireland, will study and row at Cambridge University in the coming months.

Richard Chambers is also off to Cambridge, as a coach. The Derry man, who competed for Britain, has retired as a competitive rower. He was twice world champion and took silver at the Olympic Games in 2012 in the lightweight double sculls.

Change is also in the air domestically. Trinity have parted ways with their lead coach in the men's programme, Colm Butler.

Looming over the Ireland international programme in the run-up to Tokyo 2020 is the prospect of the men’s lightweight four being removed from the Olympic programme.

The change is being proposed in order to bring gender equality to the sport, with the women’s four being added to the Games schedule.

Ireland has been strongly opposed to the change, and at the Fisa Congress in August, a counter proposal from Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Denmark posited removing the men’s (heavyweight) four.

The decision will be made at the Fisa extraordinary congress in February.

Rowing has a very big Olympic footprint and the International Olympic Committee has been pushing for changes in the sport.

Irish Open

Tomorrow in Courtmacsherry, the Irish Open for coastal rowers gives prospective internationals a chance to test themselves in Fisa-approved craft.

On Friday, the winners of the Cork Sculling Ladder will receive their awards at a presentation at Constitution rugby club.