Olympics-Rowing-Croatia celebrate, Irish dominate, Brits find redemption at Olympic regatta

By Philip O'Connor

PARIS (Reuters) -Croatia's Valent Sinkovic celebrated his 36th birthday with another gold medal in the men's pair and Ireland's Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy secured a dominant victory as the curtain came down on the Olympic lightweight sculls era at the Paris Games on Friday.

Sinkovic and his brother Martin won gold for the third Games in a row, while O'Donovan, who won lightweight silver with sibling Gary in 2016, successfully defended his Tokyo Olympic title together with McCarthy at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.

"I don't know what happened during the race, but we did it. Happy birthday to my brother," an elated Martin said.

Birthday boy Valent was delighted after a brave display that saw them overtake the British to snatch the gold medal from their grasp.

"We thought it would be hard to get a medal, but then we said we'll give our best and try. After 1500 (metres) we just went and we went like crazy, and we saw that we were much faster than the Swiss and Romania," he said.

The Sinkovic brothers finished ahead of silver medallists Britain and Switzerland, who took bronze, while the Dutch pair of Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester eased to victory in the women's pairs, with Romania edging out Australia in a furious battle for second place.

The men’s lightweight double sculls final followed a very similar pattern to that race, as O’Donovan and McCarthy took over by the halfway point, leaving Italy and Greece to fight it out for second.

The Italians, who had made the early running before the Irish took over, came out on top by just over a tenth of a second.

"You never know until you cross the line. We're very happy to have held on to first place," O'Donovan said. "There's a lot of strong competition out there ... It was tough racing from everyone, so we were never sure until we got there."

Introduced in 1996 to try to broaden the pool of racers and nations taking part, the lightweight sculls are being replaced by coastal rowing for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

In the very last lightweight sculls race of the Olympic era, there was redemption for the British crew of Emily Craig and Imogen Grant, who won gold in a time of 6:47.06 to make up for missing out on the podium in Tokyo by one-hundredth of a second.

Romania secured the silver medal and Greece the bronze to bring a close to the second-last day of a scintillating regatta.

(Reporting by Philip O'Connor; Editing by Toby Davis and Ken Ferris)