Sanita Puspure shed tears after she failed to make the semi-finals of the single sculls at the Rio Olympics five years ago. She was fourth – only the top three qualified – and it was scant consolation that her time would have been good enough to progress in the other three heats.
t 34, her international career looked in jeopardy. Four years of her life came down to fractions of a second. But Puspure began her rehabilitation on the famous Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon in Copacabana and won the C final.
She has scarcely looked back since those traumatic days in Rio played out under the shadow of the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue.
Successive World Championship gold medals were complemented by a brace of European titles secured in 2019 and 2020.
But timing is everything in sport. Had the Olympics gone ahead as scheduled last summer the
Latvia-born sculler would have been the gold medal favourite. This is no longer the case.
Her preparations have not been ideal. Initially she was injured at the start of 2021 and later was reported to have a virus which meant she missed a huge chunk of her training programme and didn’t compete at the European Championship earlier this summer.
In her absence a Russian sculler has emerged from virtually nowhere to become the dominant figure in the sport. Hanna Prakatsen won the European Championship and then a few days later won the World Cup event in Lucerne to qualify for Tokyo.
Puspure made her competitive return in Lucerne securing a bronze medal behind American Kara Kohler. There will be no shortage of quality in the field with scullers from Canada, New Zealand and Austria also in the mix.
This is Puspure’s third Olympics – she was Ireland’s sole competitor in rowing at the 2012 Games – and she has the honour of launching the Irish challenge at the XXXII Olympiad in the early hours of tomorrow morning (1.40am) at the Sea Forest Waterway.
On this specially constructed course Puspure ought not to experience any difficulties. She is drawn in lane five in heat 2 with the top three qualifying automatically for the quarter-final.
Any other result will set early alarm bells ringing in the rowing squad who on paper look poised to overtake boxing as Ireland’s top Olympic sport in the next couple of weeks.
The men’s double sculls partnership of Phillip Doyle and Ronan Byrne also had their preparations disrupted – but for a different reason. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic Doyle went back to work as a doctor in Belfast.
At the 2019 World Championship they produced arguably their best ever performance when closing on the formidable Chinese in the final 500m in the race for gold. They had to settle for silver, but still looked like a crew who could deliver an Olympic medal.
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Despite working long shifts on hospital wards, Doyle still found time to continue to train and when he returned to the National Rowing Centre he resumed his partnership with Byrne. However, they finished seventh at the 2021 European championship in Varese, which suggested they had regressed.
But having spent more time together on the water they underlined their potential at the last regatta before the Olympics when finishing second to China in Lucerne.
The departure of the Croatian Rio gold medallists, the Sinkovic brothers Martin and Valent, to a bigger boat means there is no clear favourite, although the Chinese might dispute that.
Byrne and Doyle fine-tuned their preparations at a training camp in Varese in Italy and will go into action in Tokyo in the first session of rowing on the Sea Forest Waterway (2.40am).
They are in heat 2 against Switzerland, who finished just outside the medals in Lucerne, New Zealand and Poland. The top three qualify automatically for the semi-final.
Doyle, a former Irish under-16 hockey international, trained with fellow Olympian Mark Downey – who competes in track cycling in Tokyo – during the lockdown.
“We were trying to keep up with each other and get a bit of training done on the bike.”
He is also a close friend of fellow Banbridge Olympian Russell White – they played hockey together at school. White competes in the triathlon in Tokyo.
“Myself and Ronan are a very individual partnership. It takes a while for us to click. At the Europeans we just didn’t have that click because we had time apart. The same thing happened in 2019 when he actually came tenth in the Europeans and went on to be second at the World Championships.
“We could see the momentum building in the boat before the Lucerne regatta and see the drive and click was coming with a few magic moments in some of the pieces we did. In the last two or three weeks we have been searching for that feeling again,” said Doyle.