Ireland leaves the 2026 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam with one gold medal, two silver medals and a week of performances that provided both encouragement and valuable information about where this programme stands as we move towards Olympic qualification next season.
The medals will quite rightly command the headlines.
Zoe Hyde and Mags Cremen are World Champions in the Women’s Double Sculls. Fiona Murtagh added World Championship silver to the title she won twelve months ago. Cremen then returned to the podium alongside Konan Pazzaia to claim silver in the Mixed Double.
Three medals from the Bosbaan represents an excellent return.
But these Championships were never going to be judged solely by the medal table.
Rowing Ireland High Performance Director Niall O’Carroll: “We arrived in Amsterdam wanting to put athletes and combinations into the most demanding racing available, to find out where we genuinely stand against the best crews in the world and to learn what needs to improve before Olympic qualification at the 2027 World Championships in Lucerne. Amsterdam has given us plenty of answers”.
Hyde and Cremen – World Champions
The performance of the Championships belonged to Zoe Hyde and Mags Cremen.
From the opening rounds, there was a composure about their racing. They won their heat, controlled their semi-final and arrived at the A Final having done considerably more than simply survive the rounds.
Then came the race that mattered.
Against the best Women’s Doubles in the world, Hyde and Cremen delivered when the pressure and the opportunity were at their greatest, becoming 2026 World Champions – Ireland’s first ever openweight Gold medallists in a crew boat following Fiona Murtagh’s Single Gold in 2025.
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of their Championships was the consistency of the performances that brought them there. There was no single heroic race rescuing an indifferent week. They raced well throughout the competition and were at their best when the medals were decided.
Murtagh Remains Among the World’s Best
Fiona Murtagh arrived in Amsterdam carrying something she had never carried into a World Championships before – the title of reigning World Champion.
That changes the landscape. People know who you are. Expectations change. The athlete who once hunted becomes one of those being hunted. Murtagh handled that challenge superbly.
She progressed confidently through the rounds and put herself back into the six-boat race that decides the World Championship medals.
Great Britain’s Lauren Henry produced a powerful performance to win the final, but Murtagh’s silver medal in 7:18.04, ahead of Olympic champion Karolien Florijn, deserves considerable recognition.
World Champion in 2025, World silver medallist in 2026. That is sustained excellence in one of rowing’s most unforgiving events.
Two Medals for Cremen
Hyde and Cremen’s victory provided the high point of the week – but come the final day’s racing it was evident Mags was not finished.
On the final morning, she joined Konan Pazzaia in the Mixed Double, progressing safely through the semi-final before returning later to win World Championship silver.
For Pazzaia, a World Championship podium provides another important marker of his international development.
For Cremen, it completed an exceptional Championships: gold in the Women’s Double and silver in the Mixed Double, achieved with two different partners and the different demands that brings.
The capacity to reset after the emotional high of becoming World Champion and prepare properly for another event should not be underestimated.
McCarthy Takes on a New Challenge
Not every significant performance in Amsterdam came with a medal.
Fintan McCarthy arrived at these Championships in unfamiliar territory.
A two-time Olympic champion and one of the outstanding lightweight rowers of his generation, Fintan has spent this season moving into open-weight single sculling. It is a substantial physical and technical challenge and one that places him directly alongside some of the biggest and most established scullers in international rowing.
He narrowly missed the three qualifying positions from his semi-final and had to console himself with a B Final.
His B Final did not provide the finish he would have wanted, but the experience has given Fintan and the coaching team something considerably more useful than speculation: evidence.
We now have a much clearer understanding of where he sits internationally and where the gains need to come as we move towards Olympic qualification.
For a first season in the event, there was plenty to encourage us.
New Crews, Small Margins
Perhaps some of the most useful information from the week’s racing came from crews who did not reach the podium.
Our Women’s Four missed the A Final by just 3.25 seconds before responding superbly to win the B Final in 6:26.34, finishing seventh in the world.
That response mattered.
There is a particular challenge in returning to race after the disappointment of narrowly missing a World Championship final. They did not allow one result to dictate the next one. They returned, raced aggressively and finished their Championships with a win.
The Women’s Quad provided another encouraging glimpse of what might be possible.
Izzy Clements, Sophia Young, Alison Bergin and Emily Hegarty had only recently come together, with Amsterdam providing their first racing experience as a combination.
They came within 1.51 seconds of an A Final.
They eventually finished ninth overall after taking third in the B Final, but the placing only tells part of the story. To assemble a crew shortly before a World Championships and immediately find yourself within little more than a second of the medal race gives athletes and coaches something tangible to build upon.
Our Men’s Four offered something similar.
Another relatively new combination, they missed their semi-final by just one second before producing a strong C Final performance, finishing second behind Canada.
These are not results we need to dress up as something they are not.
We want Irish crews racing A Finals and challenging for medals.
But equally, developing combinations should not be judged as finished products. Amsterdam was about finding the gaps.
In several events, those gaps are encouragingly small.
Credit to Dominic Casey and the Coaching Team
None of these performances happen in isolation.
Dominic Casey and the Irish coaching team deserve enormous credit for the work that has gone into preparing these remarkable athletes for this Championships. His focus on finding the small technical and physical gains that accumulate over months has paid dividends with impressive performances across the squad.
What Amsterdam Tells Us:
We should leave these Championships pleased, but not satisfied.
One gold and two silver medals is an excellent return and something everyone involved in the programme should be proud of. More importantly, there are signs beneath the medal table that matter for what comes next.
We have World Champions. We have a reigning World Champion returning to the podium. We have athletes successfully moving into new events. We have newly assembled crews already pushing towards World Championship A Finals. And we have young athletes gaining experience that simply cannot be replicated in training.
There are also gaps.
Some are small. Others will require significant work. Our responsibility now is to be honest enough to distinguish between the two. The next twelve months will move quickly. Olympic qualification at the 2027 World Championships in Lucerne is no longer something sitting comfortably in the distance. The work towards it is already underway.
Amsterdam was never intended to provide the final answer. It was intended to tell us where we are. One gold. Two silvers. Several crews within seconds of the world’s best. 7th in the medal table ahead of Australia, NZ, Italy and France. Plenty of insight and evidence, and plenty of potential ahead.
Photo credit: Conor Lyall.
