Around 1,000 people greeted the two silver medal-winning rowers on their arrival home to Cork airport last night.
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Speaking to media today, the pair continued to charm and said that their post-race interviews (which were seen around the world) was just the pair being themselves.
Ireland has a new World Champion; Paul O’Donovan has won gold at the World Rowing Championships.
“It’s all good for the sport and for the community down here”.
“So it was phenomenal and it was really overwhelming to just experience all of those people that were there to see us and the rest of the Irish team”.
Flanked by their coach Dominic Casey and Rowing Ireland’s high-performance coach Morten Espersen, Gary and Paul spoke of their surprise at the reception they had received and their hope that their success in Rio would encourage others to take up rowing.
“It’s just been a reflection of what it’s been like for us the last few years and that’s why we’re so happy because there’s been such a good atmosphere here and we just kept it going”.
He added: “Everything we’ve done were just trying to represent out club and we’re just not like fools around the place in front of cameras”. We’re like this everyday.
“So I thought I should probably keep my promise”.
Paul talked about the infamous “podium pants” and how they were used as motivation when training for the Olympics.
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He is only the fourth Irish sculler to win a gold medal in an A final at World championship level following in the footsteps of Sean Drea (1975) – who won the heavyweight single sculls title – and lightweights Niall O’Toole (1991) and Sinead Lynch (2001). In the Olympics you have all this different criteria. “The Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery had a bonfire blazing and as we drove past, we stuck our hands out the window and they gave us a bag of sandwiches – we were delighted!”
