SYMBOLS OF IRISH sport, 2016 highlight-heroes.
Halloween costumes in row-boats, viral videos, and signs outside businesses with ‘Pull Like A Dog’ written on them.
Poster boys for Olympic success, role models for young rowers, the much-adored ambassadors of west Cork.
But out of everyone, Gary and Paul O’Donovan are the most relaxed about their Olympian status and public adoration.
They’re all about the rowing, and even with that, they feel there’s no extra pressure on them than there was before.
“[We just] get on with it and don’t think about it so much and life’s easier that way,” Paul told TheJournal.ie, and Gary continued the rest for him:
“We’ve kind of been at it for 16 years and it’s all we’ve ever known really so. We’ll just keep doing it, yeah.”
And it’s that charisma that draws people to them and to the sport.
But despite travelling around the world for competitions and races, the boys themselves are still drawn home to Skibbereen.
Mingling with the crowd
Yesterday, Gary and Paul went to Bloom in the Park in Dublin’s Phoenix Park for the first year to take part in a cooking demonstration with model-turned-foodie Roz Purcell.
And the crowd went wild for them, laughing and clapping as the brothers performed a running commentary on Roz’s egg-based dish.
Paul on Roz’s dish: “That’s not going to feed all these people – you didn’t think this through at all.”
Or another: Paul turns to Roz, attentively stirring the contents of the pan, and notes: “This is taking a lot longer than in the test run earlier.” But this is Roz’s turf and she had his measure, turning slowly and saying that it was because he took so long to whisk the eggs.
Gary wasn’t behind the door on the banter either. Earlier, as Roz explained the instructions, Paul interrupted: ”Skillet? What’s a skillet?”
“A pan.”
“Oh right I thought it was a type of bird,” Gary quipped.
After Roz whipped up her dish (and Gary burned his mouth tasting it), Nevin Maguire, performing a cooking demonstration afterwards, came on stage to meet the brothers, telling them they had the crowd in stitches.
He took a selfie with them, as did Roz, and left them to the crowds of children, mothers, fathers and grandparents asking for pictures, handshakes, and autographs.
“Please will you sign this for my sons,” asked a woman who was holding a picture of two boys dressed in sports gear and two white caps flipped backwards.
Paul was only too delighted.
At Bloom at least, they’re proving the country’s favourite Olympic medal-winning, egg-flipping, quick-witted-quipping, rower brothers – but they demur from their status as national heroes.
“We don’t really view ourselves as national treasures at all,” says Paul, as Gary nods.
“We’re much the same as the rest of the people. A lot of people alright they’d pay attention to us and listen to us and read about us… we try to use that for positive things like telling everyone – not just athletes – to eat healthy things.”
“Do you always juggle eggs?” Roz asked Gary during the cooking demo, wondering how he’s become so good at it.
“Anytime we have to take photos with eggs, yeah.”
But despite events like this one, where the brothers are – you’ve guessed it – promoting eggs for Bord Bia, they maintain that nothing’s changed for them since the Olympics.
Paul says:
If we never won the Olympics and never won a medal we’d be out on the lake there anyway, rowing.
Their training at the moment involves two hours in the morning out in the boat, and then going back in the evening to do some high-intensity for up to an hour and a half – “race-based stuff” they call it.
Two or three times a week they do weight-based stuff like deadlifts. in between all of that they give their bodies a break and rest.
It’s not easy-going but you could be doing a lot harder things.
When it comes to how the Olympics have affected their expectations, they remain as steadfast to their ‘strategy’ as ever:
We can only go so fast. And as long as we go the fastest we can, we can do no more than that.
They say they owe a huge amount to the people of Ireland for what they’ve done, and no matter where they’re travelling to, they love coming home to Skibbereen – which is what they’re doing directly after this interview.
I mention it’s a pity they can’t row back down to Skibbereen.
They give it serious thought, with Gary saying it would save them time: “All we need is a straight waterway down!”
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