Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch have won Ireland's fourth medal of the Paris 2024 Games after claiming bronze in the A final of the men’s double sculls at the Stade Nautique at Vaires sur Marnes.
The duo’s success marks Ireland’s fourth ever rowing medal at an Olympic Games after men’s lightweight double sculls crews won silver and gold respectively at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 and the women’s four took home bronze three years ago.
It is also the first heavyweight rowing medal for Ireland at an Olympics.
The medal follows swimming gold and bronze for Daniel Wiffen and Mona McSharry respectively, while boxer Kellie Harrington has also secured at least a bronze in the women's 60kg class.
Having won both of their heats, starting in lane three, Doyle and Lynch started in lane three between Spain and the Netherlands, and were third behind the Romanian and Spanish crews as they approached the first quarter of the race.
With the USA moving into the top three, Ireland dropped down to fourth as the race reached the final 500 metres.
Doyle and Lynch then moved forward into the bronze medal place ahead of the USA entering the final 250m and made that position their own to finish third behind gold medal winners Romania and silver medalists the Netherlands, with USA fourth behind Ireland, ahead of Spain and New Zealand.
"First heavyweight medal ever. Nice to write that into the history books," said a delighted Doyle, who was ruing an early start to the sprint.
"I made a massive mistake at the end, I have to apologise to everyone. We were coming for the Dutch big time, could smell them, could sniff them. We knew these lads (Romania) were on another planet on the left hand side," he told RTÉ Sport.
"We went earlier, we pushed harder through the middle to get through. We knew people would have something else. The mistake I made was combination of all the extra work we had to do in the middle.
"I could feel his (Lynch's) legs going, we went early in our sprint. Thankfully we had enough actually to make the mistake and keep going. Another day, we’ll look back and see where we can improve for whatever comes next."
Lynch did not expect Romania, who scraped through the semis, to manage to stay out in front.
"I think what the Romanians did we expected, but we didn’t think they’d hold on," he said. "We were going toe to toe with the Dutch. We knew our sprint was a lot better than Americans."
Speaking after the medal ceremony, Lynch said he was still feeling the effects of race while they were being presented with their bronze medals.
"We were fairly rushed. Like I was shook on that podium to be honest, started barfing my ring up after.
"I thought 'can we have a minute there'. It was like ‘get the clothes on! Get the clothes on!’ But it was nice up there, a bit different to the usual World Rowing ceremonies where they just throw a medal at your neck and throw you off.
"There was huge Irish support there, a load of people came from Clonmel. My mother’s family is all here, my dad’s family. It’s great to see them all here
Lynch said that he tried to stay in his own bubble while competing, but his mother sent him the occasional text update of support from back home.
"They didn’t want to get me too nervous over the whole thing so it’ll be good to look back on that now over the next hour or two," he said.
Doyle expressed his gratitude for the support he received throughout the Games, saying that they "meant so much".
"We’ll sit now and go through them and reply to as many as possible. It’s just phenomenal the support from back home," he said.
The pair also praised their coach Fran Keane, who Doyle said "just understands us".
"He gives us enough rope to work but he keeps it close enough that he can pull us in when he has to. He trusts us completely; we trust each other completely."
Doyle added: "To be honest you cannot stop this man (Lynch) from training sometimes."
"Fran suits us very well. Some of the coaches in the Irish team micromanage ... whereas Fran knows we know what we’re doing," Lynch said.
"He has a discussion with us around our training instead of saying ‘you have to do this; you have to do this’. That definitely, clearly, worked for us in the long run and he keeps us nice and relaxed."
Earlier in the B finals, the women's double sculls team of Alison Bergin and Zoe Hyde finished fourth in their race, before the women’s four of Emily Hegarty, Natalie Long, Eimear Lambe and Imogen Magner won their race.
