Ireland's Sanita Puspure has successfully defended her gold medal at the World Rowing Championships in Austria.
Having made a slow start in the final, Puspure made a stunning comeback in the latter stages of the race to power home first over the last 500 metres on what has been a great day for the Irish.
Puspure initially competed for the country of her birth Latvia at a junior level, but she moved to Ireland in 2006 and began competing for her adopted country in 2010. She gained full Irish nationality in 2011.
Puspure is based out of Ballincollig in County Cork and has competed for Ireland at both the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. In London seven years ago she was our first female single sculls competitor at an Olympic Games since 1980.
Ronan Byrne and Philip Doyle clinched a historic silver medal in the men’s double sculls, sandwiched in between gold medalists China who pipped them at the line, and Poland in third.
World Rowing Championships
4 Medals 🥇🥇🥈🥉
4 Olympic Boats Qualified!
Fantastic week for Irish Rowing and for Irish Sport!#wearerowingireland pic.twitter.com/7pyZGKaHQh— Rowing Ireland (@RowingIreland) September 1, 2019
It was the first time that Ireland won a medal in sculling since 1975, and it came on a hot afternoon in Linz-Ottensheim. Doyle and Byrne have been in fine form of late - winning silver at the World Cup regatta in Rotterdam just last month.
Banbridge man Doyle and Byrne and came in with a time of 6:06.250 for Ireland, with Team GB home in fourth position.
Doyle and Byrne won their A/B semi-final on Friday to guarantee they'll be on the plane to the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year, following lightweight double sculls duo Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy, who qualified on Thursday for the Games.
2016 Olympic silver medallist O'Donovan now races with McCarthy - his brother Gary was moved to the single sculls earlier this season.
World Rowing Championships (Day 8) Linz-Ottensheim, Austria
Men
Double Sculls - A Final: 1 China 6:05.68, 2 Ireland (P Doyle, R Byrne) 6:06.25, 3 Poland 6:07.87.
Women
Single Sculls - A Final: 1 Ireland (S Puspure) 7:17.14, 2 New Zealand (E Twigg) 7:20.56, 3 3 United States (K Kohler) 7:22.21.
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