Irish duo Paul and Gary O'Donovan are quite rightly the toast of the nation today, having secured Ireland's first medal of these Olympics, giving a series of magnificent interviews while doing so.
Their magnificent achievement has glossed over an equally remarkable day for Ireland's female rowers: Sinead Lynch and Claire Lambe. The girls finished sixth in their final just before the O'Donovan brothers took to the water, and while they did not have their achievements rewarded in metal, their achievement deserves to be accentuated.
Sinead is 39, and has been striving to compete at the Olympics since 2000. She was an individual rower of some renown, but her Olympic ambition was hoisted by the fact she didn't have a partner: lightweight single rowing was not an Olympic event at the time. With no partner, she won gold at the World Championships, but was denied realising her dream. At the time, Claire Lambe was 10.
In 2004, Sinead found a partner: Heather Boyle. They missed out on Olympic qualification by a hundredth of a second.
Further Olympic narrow-misses followed, and in the meantime, Sinead married Olympic rower Sam Lynch, had three children and trained as a GP. Then, in September, she teamed up with Lambe - 13 years her junior, currently studying for her masters- for one last shot at Olympic qualification.
Incredibly, Sinead realised her ambition of qualifying for the Olympics, the end of sixteen years of hard graft. It's an astonishing story, and the couple's post-race interview with Joe Stack of RTE is quite something.
The dynamic between the pair is just brilliant:
Rec2189 by ivannasee-somebutts
It's one of the great Irish sporting stories of the year. Not that everybody knows it:
Tripping over themselves to jump on the bandwagon, and not a mention for the girls. Clowns. pic.twitter.com/p91BeKb9Rw
— Paul Kimmage (@PaulKimmage) August 12, 2016
