Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan defend title with another gold in Paris

The pair stormed to lightweight men’s double sculls  gold at Tokyo three years ago and repeated the feat with a brilliant performance at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.

The pair had qualified with the fastest time, but trailed Greece and Italy crews in the early stages.

But they eased past them before halfway and kept pushing to move away over the last 500 metres.

McCarthy and O’Donovan crossed the finishing line in six minutes 10.99 seconds, over two seconds clear of silver medallists Italy with Greece taking bronze.

O’Donovan said: “It was always in doubt for everyone else, no one believed we could do it coming into this competition and against all the odds we stuck with it, trained hard.”

McCarthy added: “(Gold) was always the aim for sure. We said early in the week we had a rocky enough season, well I did. Paul is obviously as consistent as hell through the whole year…

“I was trying to keep under wraps the nerves and the doubts but coming out for the final there were no nerves. We had some really good rounds, I really felt like we were back at our best for this race.”