Ireland's rowers hold their own Olympics Opening Ceremony parade before early success
Two boats started their campaign at the Paris Games today and came through unscathed to reach the semi-finals
Ireland's rowers couldn't make it onto the water for the Opening Ceremony but got into the Olympic mood by dressing up in their full kit to watch the spectacular show on Friday night.
"We actually had our own little ceremony in the hotel because we couldn’t go so we put our outfits on and paraded around the hotel," laughed Zoe Hyde. "It's probably lurking on Instagram somewhere!".
The morning after the night before, two of the record seven boats qualified by the rowing team took to the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium to begin the team's medal quest and passed their first test with flying colours.
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Novice Olympians Hyde and Alison Bergin in the women's double sculls followed the men's pair of Philip Doyle - a second-timer after Tokyo - and Daire Lynch, who travelled to Japan as the boat's reserve three years ago.
All four were beaming afterwards after coming through their heats. With the top three out of four in each heat progressing to the semis on Tuesday, and the last one with a second chance in the repechage, both crews were confident of making it through.
Doyle and Lynch stayed patient after Spain and reigning champs France raced into the lead, while the German boat got off to a slow start and never recovered.
While still in third place at the 1000m half-way mark, the Irish pair were in confident mood after beating all three of their rivals in the World Cup III final earlier this summer.
And they were impressive in taking control of affairs as they pushed their way into the lead and to a first place finish in a time of 6.13.24, almost three seconds faster than Spain and close to six better than France.
"Very happy," said Doyle. "Obviously it’s nice to win, that’s the plan to go from step to step.
"We might get a better semi-final now. It’ll be interesting now to see what the draw is for the next round. But it’s always good to win a race.
"It can matter, and say a storm comes through, semis are cancelled and there’s no way to reschedule them, they might just put you straight through.
"It was more the others went too hard than us not going hard enough.
"I’ve seen regattas pushed and changed, everything can happen so you just have to make sure you have the best result possible.
"We know they’re going to go off like the clappers, they’re going to blow or they’re not going to blow. We know when they’re going to go off too hard.
"The adrenalin is there, we kind of reined it in a bit because we knew we were going quicker than we normally would in training and we’ve been going well in training over the full distance.
"You know if they’re sustaining that there’s a world record going to be broken today, and if someone breaks a world record, fair play."
In the women's double scull, Hyde and Bergin also had to play catch-up but were comfortable in finishing in third place behind Australia and France, with the experienced Lithuanians left trailing behind in fourth after Ireland produced a strong third quarter.
"We know our event is really competitive," said Bergin.
"It’s always been like this. It’s nothing new. We’ve been racing now for the past year really. So we’re sticking to a plan and taking every race as it comes.
"I just said to Zoe a while ago, ‘We’re Olympians.’ It’s exciting and it is a special moment. We’re delighted to be here."
And Hyde added: "Obviously for our first Olympic Games we were a bit nervous.
"I think everyone is in the same situation, it's the Olympic Games and it's something special, so I think everyone suffers from the nerves but I think sometimes they're good to push you on.
"But I think it was a good race and we learned a lot, which I think is really important, and we know now what we need to work on now to step up for the semi-final."
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