July 2024 – Philip Doyle

ROWER OF THE MONTH – Ireland’s Philip Doyle made his international debut in 2018 at World Rowing Cup III in the men’s single sculls, but since then has been a fixture in the Irish men’s double sculls crew. He won silver at the 2019 World Rowing Championships together with Ronan Byrne, and they were 10th overall at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. With Daire Lynch, Doyle won 2023 World Rowing Championships bronze and is now preparing for his second Olympic Games. He is the July Rower of the Month.

How did you get into rowing?

By accident almost. I was working in Dublin in a clothing shop. Another guy who worked there was a rower for UCD; I’d played international hockey all through school but put it aside to study medicine. He suggested I should try rowing.

I went down to the Queen’s University Belfast gym and there was a machine there and the coach said do a 1k at rate 24 or something. It was 3:10 or low teens and he said ‘come back tomorrow’. So I did. I was just bored. I was training hard, it was just finding the sport to channel that into.

What have been the highlights of your career so far?

Probably my two World Championship medals, in 2019 in the double and then in 2023 in the double, silver in Linz and bronze in Serbia.

Winning’s great. Getting on the podium is great. You always associate a successful training campaign with a medal or a podium finish. That makes everything looks better, it makes the glass a nice rosy colour and makes you look back at the memories more fondly and back at the experience fonder. Everything has that lovely hue with a bit of metal around it to make it look a bit better and make you look more favourably on the experience.

I’m quite a competitive person so I do like to come away with a bit of silverware at the end of the regatta.

What’s your favourite boat class to race?

My first ever race was in a single but everything since then internationally has been a double. So I’d say the double, I do enjoy it.

I’d love to race a bigger boat but never had the opportunity. Unfortunately Ireland and heavyweight rowing didn’t have enough people; now we have enough people to fill a quad or an eight, but I think that’s a project for down the line. But the double is by far the best.

I like the simplicity of it. It’s just two people. The single is more simplistic but the single is a lot more based on if you have a bigger erg, you’re more likely to win the single because physiology plays a huge part in it. Physiology in the double plays a lot of a part, but you can still outwork someone’s physiology with a lot of togetherness and timing. It’s four little small blades just working well together.

The race isn’t super long, it’s not like a women’s pair, coming up towards seven minutes. And it’s not really really fast, it’s not a men’s eight race that’s 5:20 or 5:25. It’s not a long race, it’s not a short race, it’s just an enjoyable race. It’s hard and it’s fast, and the competitiveness of the double has always been there across the years. The podium changes a lot. I genuinely just enjoy being able to move the double well and when it moves well it feels really good.

Ireland is growing into a serious rowing power – why do you think that is?

There’s only one reason, and it’s Antonio Maurogiovanni, our performance director.

When I first started it was just myself and a young guy called Ronan Byrne in the double. There was the two of us and there was no other heavyweight men at the standard that they needed to be for Olympic qualification. When we qualified the boat in Linz and won the medal, that was our first heavyweight male world championships medal since 1974, it was 45 years since the last one. He had to create that culture.

Antonio just came and put out a call to whoever wants to come. There was eight or nine of us showed up and then we were left with two. He was like, we have two and let’s do this season and then see how many we have next year. And it just built and built and built which is great.

The success is largely down to the hard work of the athletes, but his vision putting it forward, getting funding, getting boats. The boat we raced in 2018 at the world championships was something else, but now we have the best, we have the equipment, we have everything we need, there’s no excuses now.

How has the training for Paris been going?

It’s been going nicely. I had an injury and missed the second World Cup, unfortunately I broke a rib. It was great to get back. With the podium in Poznan – obviously there were some significant names missing, but it was great to get that and build a bit of confidence into the boat.

My partner, Daire Lynch, he’s great, his consistency and an unbelievable work ethic. I just know every day he’s going to show up with the best he has and that gives you great confidence going forward, so it’s allowed us to really push in the training sessions to see where we can go.

What are you most looking forward to about the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?

I’m looking forward to the crowds. I’m looking forward to the amount of spectators. We’ve never truly had that massive crowd experience. I’m looking forward to getting on to the stage and being able to see how fast we can go. We’ve been doing some great times recently and it would be great to see if we can push on from that, see if we can put ourselves into an A-final.

The thing I’m genuinely most excited for is when the heat finishes, because then you get everyone’s times from the three heats and that allows you to calm your nerves a little bit. Until that point anybody could do anything and anyone could have been working hard the last few months and got faster than you think they are, or slower than you think they are. Once you get the heats you can kind of relax, analyse the data, and move forward.

How have you managed to juggle your medical career with rowing?

I’ve no idea. It’s hard to explain. I almost enjoy the time away from the programme as well. Being a full-time rower is quite relentless, you’re doing the same closed movements over and over and over again. It’s kind of a monotonous training style.

I enjoyed taking the year away during Tokyo, taking the time during Covid, that was a great way to break up the training. I don’t go into work thinking ‘I need to do this this and this’. It’s only in retrospect you look back and see how you balanced it.

You’re just trying to take care of yourself. I have one rule: be kind, be smart. If my body was wrecked that day and I knew I had a training session to do, I would always think will this kill myself today, will it mean the next four days will be better or will it make the next four days worse? You try to make smart decisions, get good rest and get sleep, but if you’re doing night shifts that’s impossible.

You had to be kind to yourself but cruel as well. You had to be tired sometimes. You had to force yourself on to a machine and force yourself into a boat when you didn’t want to. You don’t notice it when you’re doing it.

I got such joy and energy from being in work that it was a no brainer to me. I only stopped working in January because the programme became too full-on, but I was working two or three days a week and I genuinely left work delighted with myself. I tried to keep a hand in as much as possible.                                             

What’s your favourite session?

My favourite session we do is six 250s, four 500s and six 250s all flat out. They’re all short, bang, fast. You line up and kill each other over 500 metres then you turn around and you do it again. I love that session.

Do you have an erg playlist and what’s on it?

I have several erg playlists. I have ones for going very fast and ones for going a bit slower. Mostly this year my steady playlist has been a bit of Irish music, the Dubliners. I love a bit of Morgan Wallen, a bit of Luke Combs. There’s been a big country twist through the erg playlist this year.

Where’s your favourite place to row?

Lake Bled is hard to beat. It’s an amazing place to row. Even the colour of the water.

What’s the most memorable piece of advice anyone’s ever given you?

It’s the only quote that I really ever genuinely remember. “Bees don’t waste time explaining to flies why honey don’t taste like shit.”

To me it’s advice to just focus on yourself, and if other people don’t understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, don’t waste your energy trying to explain your methods. In work I don’t have to explain to the other doctors why I’m going to do 20k on the erg after a night shift and they’re going home to bed.