THE FINAL PULLS of the oars were not accompanied by any tinge of regret for Emily Hegarty.
At her first senior World Championships, the Skibbereen rower – alongside team-mate Aifric Keogh – finished sixth in the A Final in Plovdiv.
Despite being unable to challenge for a medal in the final stages of the race, the pair came to shore with their heads held high. The fledgling team had finished their first major competition as partners on a high. Sixth in the world.
“It was a fantastic experience overall,” Hegarty tells The42. “Being there made me hungry to push on for more [races] during the season. It’s become a massive motivator for us, we’re well back in training now.”
The 19-year-old has come through a busy 18 months to get to the world stage. Having only completed the Leaving Certificate last year, the Cork native tried to maintain the balance of studies and training as she targeted top points in her exams.
With prodigious talent comes the temptation to shun one’s studies. There are some who promise that hard training will surely guarantee success and security later in life.
Hegarty admits she’s been able to look at her rowing career from both sides.
You have to prioritise the study because you can’t really gamble with your future and your results. I might not be rowing in 10 years’ time, but I will want a career.
“Now I’m studying something I like and I’m able to stay on top of it. When you do the Leaving and you’ve got all these extra subjects that you won’t be speaking of again when you leave school, you do have to put a bit more time into those.”
Now a second year biological science student in UCC, her time can revolve around her sporting career a little bit more. Rowing sessions either side of afternoon classes shape her days.
In the lead up to the World Championships in September, Hegarty said that the freedom allowed her to enter the competition in better condition.
“Preparation heading into these championships in comparison to the juniors was better. The team was away for three weeks in camp and it was very much focused on the rowing.
“The competition at the senior worlds is massive and the standards are going to be that little bit higher. It was a bit of a shock.
“When you go away on training camps like that, you’re removed from stuff going on outside of the sport. In the build up to the seniors it was only rowing. There was nothing else to distract us from that.”
In camp, she began to build on her partnership with Keogh – one which would eventually prove fruitful.
I think we work well together when we are racing and she’d been to the World Championships before so it was relaxing knowing that it wasn’t a completely new thing to her – which it would have been for me.
“[Our result] was a shock for everyone because we were the newest combination of all the boats that went, apart from the lightweight men’s quad.”
The mixture of experience in Keogh’s arsenal coupled with Hegarty’s youthful energy produced a perfectly balanced performance and qualification for the A Final which came off the back of their semi-final race victory.
But will we see the two remain paired in the future?
“I think me and Aifric work really well together. Unless there’s someone there who could make the boat go faster, I don’t see why we’d be separated. I wouldn’t want to race with anyone else.
“I much prefer having someone else there for training and racing.
“We have our goals, but at the same time we aren’t the deciding factors. The high performance team and director make the decision on who’s racing in what boat.
The goal is to stay together and do all the training we need to do. Hopefully we’re good enough to be sent again.”
Detailing the impact Keogh has had on her development as a rower, Hegarty describes how she helped her get into the right frame of mind pre-race.
“I don’t struggle with nerves much any more. Before when I was younger I would have had a little bit of trouble with them when it came to racing season.
“She just told me to treat the race as you would against another club or against those who you face in training.
“You can’t really make it a big deal in your head. Just tell yourself you’re going to race it like you’ve raced everything else in your life.”
What does give her hope is the fact that this current crop of Irish rowers have proven themselves to be contenders at world and Olympic level.
Hegarty explains: “We’re training alongside these people and doing the same programme under the same coaches.
“There’s absolutely no reason why anyone in our team couldn’t do the same.”
Gold medals for Gary and Paul O’Donovan in the lightweight men’s double sculls and for Sanita Puspure in the single sculls gave Ireland renewed hope heading into the second half of the Olympic cycle and more evidence that the brothers’ silver medal victory two years ago in Rio wasn’t simply a flash in the pan.
“[Rowing has] always been going on down there and it’s always been successful.
“The boys did, to a large extent, put rowing on the map. Rowing in Skibb has always been successful for as far back as I can think – in national terms anyway.
“There’s a huge culture of competition in clubs in Cork and all around the country.”
That culture is important when you look at trying to increase the number of people taking up the sport in the coming years and espousing the belief that Ireland can produce some of the best athletes in the world.
With continued support and investment inevitably comes success and Hegarty isn’t one to overlook the impact those following the rowers overseas had on their performances.
“It was so nice to see so many supporters out a few weeks after. I just thought it was really really nice. These people believe in you and they’re always following you, so you have to make the effort to give back to them too.
“We had a day a few weeks [after the championships] at the national rowing centre where the team met and the people supporting were invited to come in.
“That was nice because when we came home, a lot of us had to go back to college the next day. There was a lull, a feeling that we were back to reality.”
The goal for Hegarty and Keogh will no doubt be the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. The countdown begins for qualification at next year’s World Championships in Austria in August.
Their performances thus far have shown they are unfazed by competing at the top level and, like Hegarty’s outlook on her career and future, the outcome seems as realistic as ever.
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