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Displaying items by tag: Sean Drea

#Rowing: Paul and Gary O’Donovan are the Afloat Rowers of the Month for August. The brothers from West Cork achieved something no Irish crew had done before when they took a silver medal at the Olympic Games regatta in Rio de Janeiro in the lightweight double sculls. The O’Donovans had become European champions in Brandenburg in May. Paul ended the month of August by becoming world champion in the lightweight single sculls in Rotterdam - he was the only competitor who medalled at the Olympic Games and the World Championships.

 At a tribute to the entire Ireland Olympic squad in UCD, the great Sean Drea, who finished fourth at the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, thanked the Ireland silver medallists. “On behalf of all the fourth-placed Olympians I would like to thank the O’Donovans for taking that monkey off our backs!” he said.

Rower of the Month awards: The judging panel is made up of Liam Gorman, rowing correspondent of The Irish Times, and David O'Brien, editor of Afloat magazine. Monthly awards for achievements during the year will appear on afloat.ie and the overall national award will be presented to the person or crew who, in the judges' opinion, achieved the most notable results in, or made the most significant contribution to rowing during 2016. Keep a monthly eye on progress and watch our 2016 champions list grow.

Published in Rowing

#Rowing: The Road to Rio row came to a spirited conclusion in Parliament Square at Trinity College today. Ireland Olympians Sean Drea and Brendan Dolan and Eimear Lambe, younger sister of soon-to-be Olympian Claire, were among those taking part in the final push. Ministers Michael Noonan and Frances Fitzgerald visited the stand. Thousands of young people had done stints on ergometers, with the distances they covered counted off the 9195.97 kilometres from Ireland to Rio de Janeiro.

Published in Rowing

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.