Paris 2024: Bronze for Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch in double sculls

Philip Doyle and Daire Lynch have won Ireland's fourth medal of the Paris 2024 Games after claiming bronze in the A final of the men’s double sculls at the Stade Nautique at Vaires sur Marnes.

The duo’s success marks Ireland’s fourth ever rowing medal at an Olympic Games after men’s lightweight double sculls crews won silver and gold respectively at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 and the women’s four took home bronze three years ago.

It is also the first heavyweight rowing medal for Ireland at an Olympics.

The medal follows swimming gold and bronze for Daniel Wiffen and Mona McSharry respectively, while boxer Kellie Harrington has also secured at least a bronze in the women's 60kg class.

Having won both of their heats, Starting in lane three, Doyle and Lynch started in lane three between Spain and the Netherlands, and were third behind the Romanian and Spanish crews as they approached the first quarter of the race.

With the USA moving into the top three, Ireland dropped down to fourth as the race reached the final 500 metres.

Doyle and Lynch then moved forward into the bronze medal place ahead of the USA entering the final 250m and made that position their own to finish third behind gold medal winners Romania and silver medalists the Netherlands, with USA behind Ireland in fourth, ahead of Spain and New Zealand.

"First heavyweight medal ever. Nice to write that into the history books," said a delighted Doyle, who was ruing an early start to the sprint.

"I made a massive mistake at the end, I have to apologise to everyone. We were coming for the Dutch big time, could smell them, could sniff them. We knew these lads (Romania) were on another planet on the left hand side," he told RTÉ Sport.

"We went earlier, we pushed harder through the