Oldira

So we've seen all the crews now. Men's four and quads have no chance really. Not much was expected. A B final would be nice for both of them but they're ranked dead last for now
 
Of the possible qualifiers
 
LW men double - won heat. Should be no problem qualifying
Men Double - 2nd behind the USA. In contention for the final, but I expect them to qualify
Men's Pair - 2nd behind Spain. A pleasant surprise. Very hopeful they'll qualify now
 
LW women's double - 2nd behind Romania. Qualification on a knife edge but a very decent start
Women's double - Excellent win ahead of Lithuania. Was worried about this very new combo but should qualify now.
Women's pair - 2nd behind Netherlands. Full expect them to qualify now
Women's four - 3rd behind GBR and Australia but they both expect medals here. A final isn't out of reach, but they're one of 9 crews who think they can get the 7 spots

Should Hockey have been thrown out of the Olympics when India won it every 4 years. How about Diving? 7 out of 8 Gold for China or Table Tennis? 4 out of 5 Golds for China?

M1X W1X M2- W2- M2X W2X LM2X LW2X M4- W4- M4X W4X M8+ W8+ 1 GER NED GBR< AUS NED ROU IRL GBR GBR AUS POL NED GBR ROU< 2 DEN AUS ROU> ROU CRO< LTU FRA ROU< AUS ROU NED CHN NED GBR 3 NZL NZL SWI NED ITA CHN< SWI FRA NZL GBR ITA GBR AUS CAN 4 JPN SWI ESP IRL IRL> USA ITA USA< NED USA GBR SWI ROU< AUS 5 GRE GER IRL GRE ROU FRA CZE IRL USA NED AUS UKR GER USA 6 BEL USA LTU GBR ESP IRL ESP GRE> FRA IRL ROU GER USA> CHN 7 CRO AUT SRB USA BEL AUS GRE NZL ROU CHN EST< ITA< CHN ITA 8 BUL UZB< AUS LTU CHN GRE< BEL CHN UKR DEN UKR< USA> ITA GER 9 NED> SRB< DEN< CHI NZL NED NZL ITA SWI< NZL IRL CAN CAN   10 LTU CHN> USA DEN MDA NOR UKR CAN CHN< ESP GER AUS AUT   11 CAN BUL AIN (B) ESP USA POL MEX> POL GER> POL NOR FRA     12 AIN (R) ESP CRO< CZE> FRA GER NOR SWI POL GER SWI ROU     13 SRB LTU NZL CRO AUS GBR POL AUS RSA> CAN LTU CZE     14 HUN ITA< ITA GER NOR< ITA CHN AUT IRL> MEX CHN       15 ITA> AIN (B)< RSA POL GER NZL GER GER ITA   USA       16 NOR CZE CAN ITA GBR CZE POR ESP DEN   CAN       17 URU< TUR NED NZL GRE CAN AUS DEN     CZE       18 BRA ROU TUR CAN CZE SWI> USA TUN             19 ESP GBR> POL AIN (B) SRB RSA TUR> PER             20 AUS UKR FRA FRA POL>   AUT EGY             21 USA AIN (R) CHN CHN UKR<   EST               22 POR FRA GER PAR SWE<   URU               23 AIN (B) JPN HUN   LTU   UZB>               24 CHN POL SLO   BUL   ISR               25 SLO NOR< CZE   URU>   EGY               26 TUN LAT< EGY   RSA                   27 TUR SLO     CUB                   28 MON PER     EGY                   29 ROU KUW     PER                   30 CYP BRN     BRN                   31 ISR TOG                         32 AZE                           33 SWE>                           34 EGY                           35 MEX>                           36 ESA<                           37 BER                           38 FIN                           39 PAR                           40 ZIM                           41 CIV<                           42 IRQ                           43 GEO                           44 BAR                           45 ANG                           46 BEN                           47 SUD                           48 LIB                           I posted this on the rowing world champs page as well but I said I would post it here if I did it. Anyway, so I did the exercise of trying to rank every boat's form coming into these champs. I did this last year as well and well it wasn't particularly accurate in terms of trying to predict results but hopefully offers some perspective on where our boats might rank and should be useful in assessing how tricky heat draws are and stuff. > means I think a given boat will finish higher than where I have ranked them and < means I think it will actually finish lower than where it is ranked here.          

Don't waste your precious time

17 different countries won medals in Tokyo. 
 
11 different countries won gold. 
 
Of the 14 golds won, 8 of them won by non-European nations 
 
Only gold won by Romania in Tokyo. 1 of 2 won by Ireland, Greece. 1 of 3 by Croatia
 
One of the only sports where the USA didn’t win a medal
 
Overall I think that’s a decent record. 

They absolutey do deserve the benefit of the doubt. They have done the best job basically anyone has ever done in Ireland in terms of growing a sport even if part of that was inheriting a squad with talents like Paul O'Donovan and Sanita. Its not really a short term concern but management will very possibly change for the next Olympic cycle because I kind of doubt Maurogiovanni will stick around and honestly if these worlds and Olympics go well Id be pretty surprised if he and the likes of Giuseppe de Vita dont get bigger money offers elsewhere given the number of traditional powerhouses struggling right now. Long term I trust Maurogiovanni's decisions even if occasionally they appear quite illogical I just dont know that I would trust someone else to try and run the same system.
Its not really relevant for next week but I do think it is important to note that while our current squad  is amongst the best in the world we dont yet have the structures or the infrastructure to maintain that long term. 

So few countries compete because everyone other than the biggest countries will naturaly focus on the pair and the four. Given the resources required the eight is very much an all or nothing proposition because it takes away athletes from two different Olympic events.

Ahead of the action getting underway, for anyone who is interested, I've (hopefully) attached a tracker of each crew's performances across the 3 World Cups and this year's European Championships - there are probably other regattas that I could/should include, but in the end it comes down to time.
 
Given the vagaries of the sport, there's not a lot of value in including a "season's best" time so it includes all of the crews times across the heats, repechage, semis and finals. 
 
Any crew highlighted in blue is taking part in the World Championships. Underneath the World Champs crews, I've also listed the other crews that have been fielded over the course of the year as there has been a lot of experimenting with crew composition this year. Not all of the different 4s and 8s have been listed if only 1 member of the crew has been swapped out. 
 
Rowing Performance Tracker.xlsx
 
 

'Cause it's difficult to find 8 high-value athletes to put in (just) one boat; this is a good indicator of a country's depth in rowing.

We still have a relatively small group of rowers so an injury to one/two and we have to think about pulling out teams. Particularly in the heavyweight men where we’ve struggled traditionally. Some of the focus for them this year was on the world u23 rather than the World Cup too it seems 
 
Management deserve the benefit of any doubt with selections etc as they’ve proven they can build medal winning crews 

Its a really strange phenomenon that we have these really strict standards to get selected for Europeans or a world cup and then we just seem to select basically everyone for worlds. I mean I guess the optimistic explanation is that athletes tend to hit form at the right time and therefore are hitting times/numbers now that they wouldn't have hit early in the season although you would think that would be taken into account when selecting crews earlier in the season. Maurogiovanni has said his standards are A finals at a world cup/ Europeans or top ten at worlds/ Olympics (Imagine if he pulls the withdraw a crew from the Olympics move. Don't think it would happen but I mean half of our crews at the last Olympics technically finished outside the top ten.). Anyway these two standards arent actually equivalent in most boat classes with very few boat classes having 4 of the top 10 boats be non European. It also fails to take into account the wildly different standards depending on which world cup you attend and the discrepancy between the standards and depth from one boat class to another (Top ten in a single is much harder than in an eight is the easiest example. A more complex one would be the fact that the womens four is currrently disproportionally the priority sweep boat in a lot of the big nations.). Again though I would kind of assume the actual standards for selection would take these sort of things into account.
 
Anyway the most likely actual explanation is that it is just a funding thing both in terms of rowing Ireland's funding is in part tied to the size of the squad they take to worlds and that Sport Ireland's performance standards will value top 15/20s in the world in a way that Rowing Ireland may not. Also selecting athletes for worlds ensures they get carded and receive more financial support than they otherwise would so you would rapidly run out of depth in your squad if you selected small squads for worlds. 
 
This is all to say are we not just kind of hurting ourselves by adopting strict standards for Europeans and world cups. I understand it fosters competition that may ultimately push some boats on but it also likely leads to lower retention rates from athletes from season to season and surely some of the younger boats could benefit from competing more often. I get the logic behind it and honestly plenty of other sports could do with demanding higher standards and a bit of ambition.
I do have concerns though that as a long term strategy for a country of our size and with the current rate at which we seem to produce world class rowers that if at some point in the future we stagnate a bit and the squad shrinks with a bunch of retirements we might not have the depth to replenish it and our current period of success could end being a kind of golden generation esque blip. Obviously this is probably an overly pessimistic apocalyptic way of viewing things but for example probably around half of the womens squad is likely to retire post Paris Olympics and we could very easily be left in a spot where we may only have two or so women's boats competing in 2025/2026. Then again obviously the hope is that rowing's growth continues and we start to produce more and more world class rowers over the next few years and tough selection standards actually drive us on to stay near the top of medal tables.
 
 

Some stats on quotas based on the entries on worldrowing
      Quota Entries   % chance Men Single Sculls m1x 9 48   18.75% Men Double Sculls m2x 11 30   36.67% Men Lightweight Double Sculls LM2x 7 27   25.93% Men Quad Sculls M4x 7 17   41.18% Men Coxless Pair M2- 11 28   39.29% Men Coxless Four M4- 7 17   41.18% Men Eight M8+ 5 10   50.00%               Women Single Sculls w1x 9 32   28.13% Women Double Sculls W2X 11 20   55.00% Women Lightweight Double Sculls LW2X 7 21   33.33% Women Quad Sculls W4X 7 13   53.85% Women Coxless Pair W2- 11 22   50.00% Women Coxless Four W4- 7 16   43.75% Wowen Eight W8+ 5 8   62.50%

I'm not saying you are definetely wrong but as someone who tries to track where every boat in the world ranks relative to eachother I do think this i overly pessimistic.
One of the important things to remember is that the field at world cup iii was ridiculously good, with only Italy and the USA being the only notable nations to miss it. So for example while on its own a sixth placed finish for the mens pair at any world cup may well indicate that boat isn't good enough to qualify for the Olympics in this case it probably ranks them sixth/seventh in the world.
I did literally rank every boat last year with somewhat limited accuracy but if I have time to do it again this week i'll post it here.
Anyway hopefully without going on any tangents this is how I would rank our boats qualification chances.
 
 
1. Mens Lightweight double- Should win
 
2. Women's pair- We have tried so many women's pairs over the past couple of years and on paper this is by far the best of them. We have had a pretty much unbroken five year period where no matter the combination we finish in the 6-11 range. This boat should break that and in a positive sense. This is absolutely nailed on to qualify. Whether it can medal is the question.
 
3. Men's double- Men's Double is an inherently risky boat but this has been at worst the fourth fastest boat in the world behind the Dutch, Croatians and Italians. The risk here is like we saw last year where we got a tough quarter final finished fourth in a four way sprint and missed the semis but otherwise this is a very safe bet to qualify.
 
4.Men's pair- As i said earlier despite finishing sixth at world cup iii I think that still puts them sixth/seventh in the world this year. This boat should be aiming for the A final and look you never know especially with a young crew but I am very comfortable picking this boat to finish in the top 11.
 
5. Women's double- Look its a new combination but the womens double isn't an especially strong boat class and I don't think it is deep enough to be worrying about not qualifying here. Whether this boat is a medal contender or a mid b final boat is unclear at this point but it should absolutely qualify.
 
6. Women's lightweight double- Why is everyone so pessimistic about this boat? It was third in the world last year and while it has regressed a bit it hasn't regressed that much. Look I'm nervous about this boat too but even with their terrible performances and swapping positions at world cup iii they still rank in the top 6 in the world (Americans changed their combination and who knows whether Greece can actually perform when it matters so we might even be higher). It will be a nervous semi final ( I know top 7 qualify but winning a b final can be a bit of a lottery) and the gap back to the 8th/9th best boats in the world isn't a big one but this is much better than 50/50 more like 80/20. Significant risk but likely qualifiers.
 
7. Women's four- The last time we failed to make a global final in the womens four was 2019. This boat has struggled a lot in A finals going back to last year's World champs but has looked very good in heats/ semi finals. Look this is a new combination and its possible Sanita is regressing and that Natalie Long and Imogen Magner are just good rather than great. I'm not sure about this one. We obviously are putting out a weaker less powerful boat than last year/ earlier this year but because of how incosistent those boats have been I'm not sure this new four will actually end up with a worse result. The previous four was ultimately performing like the sixth/seventh best boat in the world in finals but they were much more talented that that. This boat might make an A final and we will wonder why we ever doubted it or might finish at the back of a b final. I dont know but i'd put us the 6-8 range provisionally. The guage here is Denmark (and maybe New Zealand too), if we are better/faster than them in the heats we probably will qualify, if we're slower we almost certainly won't and if we're level with them well then this is going to be very close. I would lean on the confident side of this projection just because the limited interviews we have had coming from the likes of Maurogiovanni seem to indicate qualifying the most boats is the priority here more so than medals so its unlikely we would have just sacrificed the four in order for the pair to have a chance to medal.
 
8. Men's quad- Look the easiest comparison for this boat is the men's four last year which lost a photo finish for seventh. This boat is in a very similar spot and may well end up in a similar situation casing that seventh and final qualifying spot although the final is definitely not beyond them. It's unproven at senior level and the one athlete that is Ronan Byrne has had a rough couple of years. Talent wise there is a potential Olmypic medal winning boat here but whether it qualifies here or not is a very different question. Probably just misses out but is a good backup plan if one of the women's lightweight double or womens four.
 
9. Men's four- We have survived todaywithout any news, are now in world champs week and the examiner had a piece on Jack Dorney a couple of days ago so looks like we probably are getting to see the four actually race. Three of these athletes have been under 23 world medallists in the past 3 years so this boat should still be good even if our best two sweep rowers are together in the pair. Obviously the fact that this boat failed to race at world cup iii is discouraging but I would still expect a b final finish here and while top 7 looks very unlikely, these champs will hopefully leave us confident of its chances at FOQR next year given the age profile of this boat.
 
 
 
I'm sticking with seven boats qualified as the baseline for success here maybe 6.5 if i'm generous.
My concern is much less with qualifying boats but with medals though. On paper this is the most talented squad we have ever had and yet we are only really on track for one medal. I'd expect one of the numerous boats I expect to make an A final to sneak a medal (or maybe Siobhan McCrohan in the lightweight single) probably the mens double although relying on anything in that boat class is risky. Our medal tallys for the last four global champs have gone 2018-2(2 gold) 2019-3 (2 gold), 2021-2 (1 gold) and 2022- 3 (1 gold) so given the bigger and in theory improved squad we really should be pushing for 4 or so medals rather than hoping for 2 but sure look.
 
 
 

Adeleke is just 20 and has had a full season in the US Collegiate system. She  has 3 Olympics ahead of her. She will soon enough beat all of the above.

Adeleke is just 20 and has had a full season in the US Collegiate system. She  has 3 Olympics ahead of her. She will soon enough beat all of the above.

Adeleke is just 20 and has had a full season in the US Collegiate system. She  has 3 Olympics ahead of her. She will soon enough beat all of the above.

So this is what it feels like to be Canadian, huh?
 
4th again

One of the best performances ever by an Irish athlete. Just had three better than her.. 

One of the best performances ever by an Irish athlete. Just had three better than her.. 

One of the best performances ever by an Irish athlete. Just had three better than her.. 

One of the best performances ever by an Irish athlete. Just had three better than her.. 

Squad was announced yesterday. Lots of movement between boats on the Women's side of things and for basically the first time ever we are rolling out a Men's Quad mostly made up of under 23 medallists from a month ago. 9 Olympic class boats and 28 total athletes selected across all boats- both records for Ireland as far as I know.
 
Women's Double Sculls: Zoe Hyde / Alison Bergin 
 
Women's Lightweight Double Sculls: Aoife Casey / Margaret Cremen
 
Women's Pair: Aifric Keogh / Fiona Murtagh
 
Women's Four: Natalie Long / Imogen Magner / Sanita Puspure / Eimear Lambe
 
 
 
Men's Double Sculls: Daire Lynch / Philip Doyle
 
Men's Quadruple Sculls: Konan Pazzaia / Ronan Byrne / Andrew Sheehan / Brian Colsh
 
Men's Lightweight Double Sculls: Fintan McCarthy / Paul O'Donovan
 
Men's Pair: Ross Corrigan / Nathan Timoney
 
Men's Four: Fionnán McQuillan Tolan / Adam Murphy / Jack Dorney / John Kearney
 
Expectations for this squad are high despite some very mixed results so far this year and five of these boats being combinations that have never raced together before.
(Hopefully we see all these boats race but our high performance director has a habit of withdrawing boats based on trial results the week before a regatta. Didn't do it before worlds last year but has done it for well every other regatta we have raced over this Olympic cycle. The Men's Four is probably the most at risk there.)

One of the best performances ever by an Irish athlete. Just had three better than her.. 

Just to confirm that Emily Hegarty is still injured. Puspure was supposed to be part of the sweep crew earlier in the year but was injured herself
 
Tara Hanlon is the one to miss out with the emergence of Bergin and Magner

I would have liked Kerry to win it all