Meet Philip Doyle & Daire Lynch - Ireland's bronze medal-winning rowers

Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch have taken different paths towards the Olympic podium, but their stories are now eternally intertwined after they won double sculls bronze on the waters of Vaires-sur-Marnes.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Banbridge native Doyle was a trainee doctor working on the general medical ward at Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry.

At that time he was partnered with Ronan Byrne, with whom he won won silver at the 2019 World Championships.

Doyle went through gruelling solo training sessions around shifts that flipped between days and nights over the course of a winter where the hospital was creaking under the pressure of another Covid-19 wave.

He knows what it means to graft.

The 31-year-old's rowing journey began back in 2014. Doyle was working part-time in a clothes shop where he met a guy who rowed for UCD. Doyle was urged to pick up the oars and give it a try. He did and never looked back.

He made his international debut in 2018 at World Rowing Cup III in the men's single sculls, and ever since he's been a fixture in Ireland's double sculls crew, winning that World silver with Byrne before they came 10th overall at the Tokyo Games.

Doyle teamed up with Lynch in 2023, and it was quickly obvious that it was a potent match.

They were fourth at the Europeans and then claimed bronze at the Worlds. That result qualified the boat for Paris, and they continued to build momentum, winning gold at a World Cup regatta in June. They never dared proclaim it, but a medal in Paris was always in their sights.

Lynch is five years younger than Doyle.

This is the Clonmel man's Olympic debut, but his talent has also been clear for years.

After being bitten by the rowing bug, Lynch displayed a phenomenal appetite for practice to mark