Ringtown native says working with Olympic rowers 'a huge honour'

A Ringtown native is part of the backroom crew doing everything in their power to ensure that the Irish rowing team is in the best possible shape for the Olympics, which gets underway in France later this month.

After working with the renowned rowing club in Skibbereen, sports physiotherapist Orla Doolin joined the Rowing Ireland team a little over a year and a half ago, just as their Olympic preparations started ramping up.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner from Spain, where she is on camp with the lightweights team and current mens double Olympic champions, Orla, daughter of Peggy Coffey and Des Doolin, says going to the Olympics with Team Ireland and Rowing Ireland is "the biggest privilege”.

“I'm working with full time athletes who train two or three times a day, 6 to 6.5 days of the week, in the 4 year cycle coming into the Olympic Games. Elite rowing is a high intensity race over 2km, so rowers need to train to be powerful and explosive but also have huge aerobic engines. They endeavour to compete even if injured or ill, so a big part of our role is to make sure they are able to safely push to their extremes and help them pull back when their bodies say no more.

“Our Irish team are so humble and train so honestly, so you hold yourself to their standards, going all in for them. Outside of actual injury management and prevention, as an exercise professional your also making sure their recovery, warm ups, movement patterns, fuelling, general health and wellbeing is elite on and off the water.

“In these weeks pre Games, they are in their most intensive training block, training in hot weather to acclimatise and gain every inch they can to perform at their best.

“We take little risk with activities off the water in these weeks; they are rowing, eating, sleeping, repeat.

“They are kept in a tight training bubble and I feel very lucky to be apart of it.”

Being attuned to the psychological and emotional stressors on the athletes, knowing how much it influences their physical state, is an integral part of Orla's role, she says. “We are very much an athlete-centred, coach-led performance program. When we travel abroad on long camps or to competitions, often the physiotherapist is the only support staff on the ground, alongside the coaches, so you go through the highs and lows with them.

“We have a wider support team also at home, nutritionists, S&C, sports doctors, psychologists, physiologists, a sort of flat hierarchy of experts, so that no stone is left unturned in the preparation by the coaches”.

It has been a steep learning curve since she joined the backroom crew, coming from Munster Champions Castlehaven GAA, but one she is thoroughly enjoying.

“The team spend hours a day working on technique, and then slogging out the hard sessions for physiological gains. They are incredible to be around, they’ve qualified seven boats for this Olympics, the most ever for an Irish team”.

Team Ireland includes the current Olympic mens lightweight double champions, Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy, while Daire Lynch and Phillip Doyle recently won the heavyweight mens double at the recent World Cup series event in Poland. The womens heavyweight pair of Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh won silver medals at the same competition..

“Our crews are all charging for medals as real contenders which is really cool,” Orla says.

She is not the only Westmeath native in the Rowing Ireland crew. Athlone native Fran Keane is head coach of the mens heavyweight team, and along with Dominic Casey were influential in getting Orla up to speed in the world of rowing.

“To connect with the athletes you must know the sport and appreciate the expectations of the athletes, and I couldn’t have done this without the coaches support. The technical expertise of the coach is instrumental in any athletes return to play from injury and we stay a team in every part of the athletes recovery”.

Looking forward to getting to Paris after an intensive year of training camps and competitions, Orla says her involvement with the Irish team is a career highlight; challenging, long hours, but hugely rewarding.

“I get to work at the most gorgeous lakes in Europe, and spend a lot of time out on the water with the coaches up close to the rowers which is really fun. You have to be flexible and able to adapt to different work environments and put your hand to anything thats needed. Its important to be sensitive too when working with endurance athletes who are typically always in some fatigue state and don’t want to be constantly asked about an old injury or niggle, they are there to perform".