City of Derry Boating Club make waves at Indoor Rowing Championships

City of Derry Boating Club are celebrating this week after great success at the All Ireland Indoor Rowing Championships. One of the oldest rowing clubs in Ireland, it is packed full of eccentric people who like to inflict pain on themselves by training for this indoor event! Once the clocks change in the Autumn the club’s Tuesday and Thursday evening training sessions involve hours of monotonous kilometres on the ergometers (rowing machines) with the goal to enter the IIRC. CDBC is a small amateur rowing club but are usually successful in bringing home some medals and Irish records. The IIRC is a big event with over 1000 entries from 13 year olds to 70+, including para rowers with 500m sprints, 1000m, 2000m and team relays. This year they had nine members entering 12 events. Team Captain Gaetano D'Urso entered all three (50-59) and came second (Silver) in the 500m and 1000m, Aidan Begley, who only started rowing in summer 2016, entered two events, the 500m and 2000m. Aidan Begley and Caolan Baldwin came up against very tough opposition as they had moved into a new category, LMU23 (Light Men under 23), but performed very well with both achieving personal bests. The club had three women entering the 30-39 2000m category, namely Nia-Wyn Loughlin, Mairead Nic Bhloscaidh and Catriona Tierney (who only joined in late summer following a taster session) and they again all three achieved personal bests. The club has a para rower, Karol Doherty, who had been considered for the Irish Paralympic squad but unfortunately due to a viral infection he missed out on his place this time. Normally the para rowers do 1000m but this year their distance was doubled to bring them into line with World Paralympics, so a big challenge awaits for Karol, who was rowing using only his arms because of his injury, and he completed his event in a great time of 09.31mins and he gained a gold. Another master rower, Desmond Brown entered the 65-69 category and gained silver and his wife Maureen Brown entered the 60-69 for the second year and got silver as well. All in all, another successful year at the indoors, but disappointingly only two of the club’s junior members undertook fairly regular training. They were unable to compete due to prior commitments. To encourage 'Everyone Active 2020: Outdoor Spaces,' the club is keen to recruit new members especially women, people over 50 and is willing to assess and advise any people with disabilities. Along with Karol there are two young women with disabilities, who have visual impairment.