Inside Ireland’s No. 1 rowing club: the Skibbereen medal factory where Olympic medallists are shaped

THE old white double doors that greet you on arrival at Ireland’s greatest – and most successful – rowing club have seen better days. At one stage the splintered glass panels on these battered doors were held together by strips of red insulation tape, but they’ve been fixed since. 

It’s not a grand entrance to the playground of Olympians, the doors waiting for you at the bottom of ten steps. It’s not fancy. Instead, this two-story white building is much more modest. That’s part of Skibbereen Rowing Club’s charm in one sense, how the country club formed in 1970 and built on the banks of a farmer’s field – on the shore of the River Ilen – has risen to become the number one club in the country. 

KNOCK, KNOCK: The modest entrance to Skibbereen Rowing Club.

Beyond the main doors, each with their own club sticker to remind you where you are, is a small hall. Immediately you’re drawn to the wall-to-wall gold board that dominates the far wall. On here is the name of every Skibbereen rower to win a national championship title for the club, stretching back to the original trailblazer Nuala Lupton in 1976 and all the way up to the present day, with the names of the four crews that won titles at the recent nationals next to go up. That success brought Skibb’s record haul to an incredible 199 titles. They’ll eventually need a bigger board.

To the back left of the busy hall that includes a black notice board runs a wooden stairs with 13 steps up to the meeting room, decorated with pennants and awards from various regattas. This was where the national media crammed into Gary and Paul O’Donovan’s homecoming press conference after the 2016 Olympics. On the wooden counter in the room sits a photo of Gary and Paul with their famous silver medals from those Games, a reminder of the heights rowers from this club have reached. This club has won the full set of Olympic medals – gold (Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy), silver (Gary and Paul O’Donovan) and bronze (Emily Hegarty). Of the seven Irish rowers who have won Olympic medals, Skibbereen is home to four.

SIGN OF SUCCESS: Rowing pennants hang everywhere in the upstairs meeting room.

Six rowing machines stand up straight in the meeting room, waiting to be called into action, and the next room with its white wall – built on top of the old squash court underneath that houses some weights – is packed with rowing machines resting on a wooden floor. This is where Skibb’s rowers of all ages go to work. It gets hot and heavy here on busy days.

WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS: The upstairs room filled with rowing machines.

Moving back down stairs, the long room that runs at the back of the club is packed with more rowing machines and exercise bikes. As you leave to walk outside towards the boathouse, you’ll pass the collection of wellies rowers use when launching their boats onto the Ilen. Just beyond this point, an entrance has been opened into the weights room on the bottom floor that before was only accessible at the front of the clubhouse; this was a gym with no windows and no natural light, but the recent work makes perfect sense.

WET, WET, WET: The collection point for wellies in the clubhouse.

Work is underway on a new building to the back of the clubhouse, which will include a gym and also hold boats, as the two isles of the main boathouse itself are under pressure to cater for all the boats, given the numbers at the club. News in May that the club will receive €200,000 in the latest Sports Capital and Equipment Programme was welcomed too, as Skibbereen Rowing Club looks to keep pace with demand.

REMEMBER THE NAME: Skibbereen Rowing Club's boathouse.

Outside the boathouse is the stoney slope down to the River Ilen, a stretch of water Skibb’s rowers have almost to themselves. This is where the magic happens. It’s where Olympic medallists Paul O’Donovan, Fintan McCarthy, Gary O’Donovan and Emily Hegarty all learned to row and race. The river is an unsung hero in this success story.

‘It has plenty of length from Skibbereen town to the mouth of the river at Inane Point, which is ideal for those long spins,’ Dominic Casey explained before. ‘There are some great straights where we can do our two kilometre race pieces from Newcourt to Deelish and from Reendhuna to Creagh slip. Also the river is relatively quiet and there is always a calm stretch to train on.’

There is a calmness in the club these weeks too, post the national championships, but already there are tourists making the short drive from Skibbereen town to take photos of the home club of Ireland’s greatest rowers, the breeding ground where it all began.