LAST UPDATE | 8 Aug

A GOOD SAMARITAN found himself giving a lift to Olympic Champions Paul O’Donovan, Fintan McCarthy and fellow Team Ireland rower Natalie Long back to Cork from Dublin Airport on Tuesday.

Kieran Duggan had his car packed with “two-times the amount of baggage for a family of four” and the three stellar Olympians after the trio had yet to arrange transport back home.

Olympic champion Fintan McCarthy confirmed on The Southern Star’s Star Sport podcast on Wednesday that he, O’Donovan and Long had initially planned on getting the bus back to Cork if it wasn’t booked out upon their arrival in Dublin.

Skibbereen native McCarthy was going only as far as his current accommodation in Ballincollig to drop off bags before returning to Paris later in the week for the Olympic closing ceremony.

O’Donovan, meanwhile, a doctor, was back to work in Cork City on Wednesday and will remain in Cork before competing in the lightweight single sculls at the World Rowing Championships from 18 August.

“We met a lovely man on the flight, Kieran Duggan. He gave Paul and I a lift down,” McCarthy said.

“See, we weren’t sure about dates going home. I’m actually going back out tomorrow (Thursday) so I kind of just came back to drop a million bags that we’ve collected over the last few weeks and get myself sorted.

“Paul’s starting work today (Wednesday), so we didn’t really have anything organised for going home.

“So thank God, he saved the day, really,” McCarthy added of Limerick native Duggan, who lives in Mallow.

“We were going to book the Air Coach and then he just said, ‘Look, come on, get in the car, I’ll take you back.’

“In fairness, we got a door-to-door service, it was brilliant,” McCarthy said.

Driver Kieran Duggan relayed the story to The Neil Prendeville Show on Cork’s RedFM on Thursday.

“I said, ‘I’m in the car on my own, I can fit in three or four of you’. Fintan just looked at me and I got mortified then when he said, ‘I might take you up on that’.”

Duggan waited in the arrival hall for approximately 20 minutes before the rest of the rowers, who were on the same flight as him back from Paris, passed through security and collected their luggage.

While the airline and captain of the plane acknowledged their presence on the plane, according to Duggan, Dublin Airport were not aware the sportspeople were due to land until 20 minutes before they had arrived.

“They didn’t seemed to be fussed if there wasn’t a plan B or a plan C or a plan D,” Duggan said.

He added: “I was waiting for about 15 or 20 minutes before I said, ‘Ah, Kieran, look. Cop on. They’re surely been looked after. They’ve been ushered into a VIP area and they’re in a limo, half way down to Cork as it is’.”

Duggan said he asked a woman who looked to be working for the airport and was preparing for a camera shot whether the rowers had passed through yet. She said they had not, so he decided to wait and see if they did indeed need their lift.

Duggan told the programme that after a small group has stopped cheering and congratulating the athletes, he approached McCarthy again and asked if he was going to take him up on the offer of a lift.

“I was fully expecting him to say, ‘Ah no, we’re sorted’. But then he said ‘Yeah, how many can you take?’,” he said.

The Corkman then drove his Olympic passengers back down towards Cork, stopping off at Manor Stone Service Station in Ballacolla, Co Laois. Duggan said he declined the offer from O’Donovan, McCarthy and Long to pay for his petrol.

“I certainly didn’t want to be asking them too many questions, or prying or anything like that. They spoke of anything and everything – when they were growing up, when they decided to concentrate on rowing and give up other sports and what other sports they would’ve played,” Duggan said.

The rowers are some of the first to return home after their competitions ended at the Paris Olympic Games last week. Though Duggan said McCarthy is thinking about heading back for the closing ceremony in Paris later this week.

O’Donovan and McCarthy won a gold medal in the Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls final last week, defending their title and crossing the line with a time of 6:10:99.

Natalie Long rounded off her Olympic Games in style by winning the B final for the Coxless Four on last week alongside teammates Aoife Hegarty, Imogen Magner and Eimear Lambe. They finished in seventh place after missing out on the A final.