January 18th saw us travelling to Limerick for the Irish Indoor Rowing Championships held annually in UL Sports Arena. This event forms a crucial part of the trialling process for our hopeful athletes and it was great this year to see a larger group of juniors making the journey to compete and show support. A technical issue saw the early part of the day delayed by several hours, but such was the high level of organisation that the time had been recovered by the end of the day.
The day got off to a great start with J14 rower Katie Nolan putting in a big PB in the 4 minute event to finish in the top ten and that really set the tone for the day. Next up was Isabel Rossiter with a strong performance in the J18 1000m. Then came the 2k tests.
All athletes rowed amazing times with PBs coming thick and fast. Sean Power started the 2k races for New Ross and achieved a huge PB finishing top 15 in the J16 age group.
U23 rower Anna Brennan secured her first Indoors medal with a Silver in her 2k event and followed that up later in the day with a gold in the women’s relay alongside Clonmel Rowing Club.
Jack Moylan raced in the men’s open category delivering another top ten finish for New Ross.
Kevin, Liam, Darragh and Ben all raced in the J18 2k and each put in strong PB times, cheering each other on while not racing themselves. Darragh managed to stick to his personal race plan despite being seated beside Skibbereen’s Mattias Cogan who broke the Irish record in that event in a blistering time of 6:03.5 – not an easy task, well done!
Later in the day, a number of our juniors also took on the 500m with Sean Power coming in 3rd in his age group to bring home a bronze medal taking the medal count for the day to 3!
All athletes performed extremely well at what is arguably the toughest event on the rowing calendar, but what really made the day special was the interaction and camaraderie between them. Supporting each other throughout the day, cheering each other on and picking each other up afterwards
This really was a special event this year and the icing on the cake was the group dinner on the way home.
