Gold medal (Lightweight double sculls, Tokyo 2020) Gold Medal (Lightweight double sculls, Paris 2024) Silver medal (Lightweight double sculls, Rio de Janeiro 2016)[1]
Paul O'Donovan (born 19 April 1994) is an Irish lightweight rower. He is a double Olympic champion in the lightweight double sculls where he set a new world's best time for that event and is a seven-time world champion in single and double sculls.[2][3]
At the 2024 Irish Indoor Rowing Championships, he set a national record on the 2000m ergometer and became the third lightweight man to break six-minutes with a time of 5:58.4.[11][12]
In a poll taken in August 2024, during the 2024 Paris Olympics, he was voted "Ireland's greatest-ever Olympian".[13]
Early life
Paul O'Donovan was born on 19 April 1994 in Lisheen near Skibbereen, County Cork to Teddy and Trish O'Donovan.[14][15] Like his elder brother Gary, he attended Lisheen National School and St Fachtna's De La Salle secondary school in Skibbereen.[16][17] Paul O'Donovan entered UCD in 2012 on an Ad Astra Elite Athlete Scholarship[18][19] and graduated with a BSc in Physiotherapy[20] from University College Dublin in 2017. He went on to University College Cork where he studied Graduate Entry Medicine, receiving a Quercus Sports' Scholarship and graduating in May 2023 with first class honours. [21]
O'Donovan was introduced to rowing in 2001 aged around seven when his father took the two brothers to Skibbereen Rowing Club. His father, himself a rower, coached them in the sport and remained a coach to O'Donovan until 2013.[22]
He is the third cousin of Irish Olympic rowing bronze medalist Emily Hegarty.[23][24]
Rowing career
In 2008, the O'Donovan brothers were selected for the Irish junior team at the Home International Regatta held in Cardiff, Wales, and won gold in the junior quad sculls.[25] Paul O'Donovan also competed in the single sculls; he became the junior single sculls champion of Ireland when he was 15, and was placed fourth in the 2011 World Junior Championships.[15] When he was 19, he won the bronze medal in the men's lightweight sculls at the World Rowing U23 Championships held in Linz, Austria.[14]
The O'Donovan brothers had narrowly qualified for the Rio Olympics by beating Greece at the 2015 World Championship. In August 2016 at the Rio Olympics, the O'Donovan brothers won silver behind France in the lightweight double sculls, the first rowing medal won by Ireland at the Olympics.[28]
The brothers finished in the silver position in men's lightweight double sculls at the 2017 European Rowing Championships. They also won silver at the second World Rowing Cup regatta of the season in Poland in June,[30] and bronze at the third in July.[31]
At the 2017 World Rowing Championships in Florida, Paul O'Donovan won gold at the lightweight men's single sculls.[32] His brother Gary was ill and they did not take part in the lightweight men's double sculls event.[33]
O'Donovan raced with McCarthy at the 2021 European Rowing Championships, where they won gold.[9] The following month they won gold again at the World Rowing Cup II regatta in Lucerne.[35]
After spending some of 2022 in Australia as part of his medical studies,[38] O'Donovan reunited with McCarthy to claim gold for a 2nd year in a row at the 2022 European Rowing Championships.
2024
O'Donovan and McCarthy once again represented Ireland at the 2024 Summer Olympics, claiming their second successive gold medal in the lightweight double sculls and also becoming the only Irish Olympian to medal at three games. [39]
