Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy power to victory, four Irish boats into World Rowing Championship semi-finals

Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy remain on course to retain their lightweight double sculls world title after another winning performance at the World Rowing Championships in Racice, Czech Republic.

Four Irish crews booked their passage through to A finals this morning as O'Donovan and McCarthy again stamped their class on proceedings.

The reigning World, Olympic and European champions looked untroubled in their two earlier outings in the competition and in this morning's semi-final, while they didn't dominate from the start, they assumed control in the second half of the race to take the win.

The Swiss crew of Jan Schaeuble and Raphael Ahumada made the early running, maintaining half a second lead over the Irish pair through to halfway, with Ukraine in third.

From there, however, the Skibbereen duo eased through the gears and nudged ahead with 700 metres to go. With the finishing line in sight it was a matter of controlling the stroke rate – hovering around the 39 per-minute mark – as they finished nearly a boat length ahead of the Swiss in a time of 6:24.41.

Their final takes place at 1.23pm on Saturday.

Aoife Casey and Margaret Cremen put in a fine showing to progress to the final of the women's lightweight double sculls.

Third at the halfway point, they got ahead of the Greek crew to finish second to Great Britain in a time of 7:02.15.

Also through to an A final is the women's four.

Aifric Keogh, Eimear Lambe, Fiona Murtagh and Emily Hegarty were second throughout their race, finishing just under two seconds behind Great Britain to advance to Saturday's final.

In the mixed double sculls repechage, Katie O'Brien and Steven McGowan booked a place in the A final by finishing second behind Uzbekistan in a time of 8:52.28.

Lydia