In their first Olympic Games, Ross Corrigan and Nathan Timoney had the entire county well and truly rowing in behind them.
The Fermanagh duo made it through the heats on day one, and in one of the races of the entire week, they booked their place in the ‘A’ Final by securing third place in the semi-final, holding off New Zealand by 0.5 seconds.
In Friday morning’s final, the pair went out hard but the third 500m saw them slip back in position and the chance of medalling eluded them this time, as they finished sixth in 6:30:49.
“Overall, it’s in some ways disappointing, personally, but you can’t really dwell on that side of things. It was still savage to make an ‘A’ Final and if you compare all the ‘A’ Finals, the spread in ours from first to sixth was pretty close,” said Corrigan, on Monday afternoon.
What disappointed the Kinawley man most though is that he feels they could’ve raced a better final;
“It’s obviously a bit gutting to come away from the final when, personally, I didn’t feel like I had my best race.
“I said it before we went into the final, if we have a flying race and we come sixth that’s fine, but it’s that one feeling; that I didn’t feel like I got fully into it.
“We just never really came onto what we’d describe as an ‘easy rhythm’.
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