Price of Irish rowing medals in Paris? €3.9m, plus rowers ‘have to drop their friends, their family’ in training move

As Ireland’s high-performance rowing director, Maurogiovanni has made a seminal impact since he arrived in 2017.

On Wednesday night, the Olympic Federation of Ireland confirmed a record 16 rowers spread across seven crews will compete in the Olympic regatta in Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium in southeast Paris next month.

The Irish rowing renaissance predates Maurogiovanni’s arrival. The O’Donovan brothers won silver medals at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and Skibbereen’s Mr Rowing, Dominic Casey, had almost single-handedly helped to drag Irish rowing into the 21st Century.

But under the Italian’s direction, it has moved up several notches, particularly in the heavyweight division. This is the future, as lightweight rowing will be discontinued as an Olympic class after the Paris Games. Significantly, five of the Irish crews competing next month are in the open classes.

Rowing is the best publicly funded Olympic Sport in Ireland, receiving €3.9m in this Olympic cycle (2021-2024). The next best is Paralympics Ireland (€3.7m).

Twenty-nine rowers, including two Paralympic athletes, are being funded to €863,000 this year under Sport Ireland’s carding system – more than double the allocation to the Irish boxing squad.

And Rowing Ireland have more athletes (16) on the maximum grant of €40,000 than any other sport. But as these allocations are based exclusively on achieving results at international level, the rowing squad has delivered and will be expected to do so again in Paris.

Maurogiovanni, who worked for two Olympic cycles as a coach with Australian Rowing – his family are still based there – believes the financial support is very important.

“If you think about how much a boat costs, how much one blade costs, how much it costs to train abroad because of the weather here, then you can understand how much expense there is in this sport,” said Maurogiovanni, who rowed for Italy at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics.

“So the financial support can make a difference. Compared to the rest of the top, we know we are roughly top six or seven. That’s great, but if you go into the budget of each of these countries, then you will see that there is still a significant gap in terms of finance.

“It doesn’t mean that just because you have more money you will have better results, but it does put yourself in a position to operate in a better way. Countries invest €1.5-€2m per medal every year to win at Olympic Games.”

Maurogiovanni insists all the Irish rowers train together in the National Rowing Centre in Innishannon in west Cork. He is a strong advocate of what he describes as the ‘centralised programme’.

“Rowing is a very specific team sport. If we don’t centralise the programme, we can’t have crews performing internationally. We can’t have one in the north, [and] another in the south.

“We need them centralised in a place like this where they can row in the same boat together and match as much as possible. This is a quite demanding sport and the sacrifice of the coaches and the athletes in being centralised is quite high.

“People have to drop their friends, their family and move here in this place, which is great but is not Dublin, New York, it’s not Rome. It is quite good for rowing, but it is also quite isolated,” he admits.

Maurogiovanni has a reputation for being a tough task-master but insists this is not the case.

“Ah, no. No, I don’t think so,” he responds to my question. “Our job is to help the athletes achieve as much as they want to achieve. This is what our job is, to create, as much as possible, positive circumstances and a competitive environment to help them. We all feel we are in the same boat.

“Of course, there are times I have to say no. If I say yes to everyone or make everyone happy, we will make everyone unhappy. High performance doesn’t work like that. It is for a very small group. When you have athletes as motivated as the coaches, the job is some way easier. We can always analyse what we can do better.

“We used to say to the athletes that everyone in the world has 80pc of the factors right. Good boat, good coaches, good environment, some funding. Everyone.

“So to make a difference, it is the 20pc of details that is our job, to go in very deep and get that 20pc right. That is challenging, fascinating but hard. So does that put me as a hard man? No, I wouldn’t say that.”

Six of the rowers competing in Paris already have Olympic medals – sculler Paul O’Donovan has two. But the Italian would not be drawn on what he is expecting in terms of medals for next month’s Games.

“We don’t try to focus too much on the outcome but the process. This is always what we say to the athletes in our team and the coaches. We need to do the best we can do. Focus on the process, tick all the boxes and whatever the results, then we need to be happy.

“We have to put ourselves in the position where we do everything we can do and then line up the day of the race and have fun regardless of the results. If we do that, the medals will come.”

IRELAND OLYMPIC ROWING TEAM

Men’s lightweight double scull: Paul O’Donovan (Skibbereen), Fintan McCarthy (Skibbereen)

Women’s lightweight double scull: Margaret Cremen (Rochestown), Aoife Casey (Skibbereen)

Men’s double scull: Philip Doyle (Banbridge), Daire Lynch (Clonmel)

Women’s double scull: Zoe Hyde (Killorglin), Alison Bergin (Kildinan, Co Cork)

Men’s pair: Ross Corrigan (Enniskillen), Nathan Timoney (Enniskillen)

Women’s pair: Aifric Keogh (Na Forbacha, Co Galway), Fiona Murtagh (Moycullen)

Women’s four: Emily Hegarty (Skibbereen), Natalie Long (Cobh/Johannesburg), Eimear Lambe (Cabra) Imogen Magner (Killavullen, Co Cork/Cambridge), Holly Davis (Ballincollig) (reserve)