Fiona Murtagh and the duo of Fintan McCarthy and Konan Pazzaia will vie for medals at the European Rowing Championships in Bulgaria this weekend after advancing to the finals of their respective events.
Murtagh, who has made the switch from sweep to single sculls, stormed to victory in her semi-final in Plovdiv in seven minutes 18.97 seconds, with Greece's Evangelia Anastasiadou her nearest pursuer almost two second in arrears and Benthe Boonstra of the Netherlands third.
In Sunday's final (10.13am Irish time), Murtagh has strong claims of securing a silver medal from lane four, but Britain's Lauren Henry is in imperious form and looks almost impossible to beat after setting a European record in the heats and winning her own semi-final in 7:12.13.
McCarthy and Pazzaia progressed to Saturday's final (10.40am Irish time) of the double sculls in 6:05.78, with Romania's Olympic champions Andrei Cornea and Marian Enache lowering the European Championships record they set in the heats by clocking 6:00.79. Italy's Niels Torre and Gabriel Soares finished third.
B finals beckon for the men's pair of Daire Lynch and Ross Corrigan, and the quadruple sculls crew of Philip Doyle, Ronan Byrne, Adam Murphy and Andrew Sheehan after both boats finished fifth in their semi-finals.
On Thursday Izzy Clements (lightweight women's single sculls), Jake McCarthy (lightweight men's single sculls), and Mags Cremen and Zoe Hyde (women’s double sculls) qualified for finals tomorrow.
Watch the European Rowing Championships on Saturday and Sunday from 8.30am on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
