Rowing has been a godsend says Ardara Paralympian Steven McGowan

Ardara’s Steven McGowan and teammate Katie O’Brien, Galway, have secured Ireland's first boat for next summer’s Paralympic Games in Paris.

The Galway Rowing Club duo earned their passage to Paris on Tuesday afternoon winning their PR2 Mixed Double Sculls heat at the World Rowing Championships in Belgrade.

Speaking on Wednesday morning, he admits he’s still getting his head around the fact that he’s going to be a Paralympian in 2024. 

“Yesterday, after we won, it was just like a weight was lifted,” Steven told DonegalLive. “It’s an amazing feeling. Training as hard as we have, it’s all paid off. It’s three years of effort and sacrifice. And it culminated in that moment. 

“We’re buzzing. It still hasn’t fully sunk in to be honest. “It’s August 29, 2024. So we’re just under a year out. This week, it’s such a weight lifted. There is a ‘last chance’ regatta next year but we didn’t want to leave ourselves in the position where we were resting our hopes on that. 

“That would have been pressure. Now, we can just begin to look forward to all of what’s ahead of us”.  

McGowan only picked up the sport in 2021 but has made incredible progress to be competing at the level he is right now.  With their tickets for Paris punched, McGowan says the pressure is off for both he and teammate O’Brien ahead of Saturday’s World Championships final.   

“Saturday now, we’ve nothing to lose. We’ve qualified. So we can go out with the intention of leaving it all on the water. We’ll empty our tank and see what we can do. 

“We were the third fasted in the heats on Tuesday so there is no reason we can’t be aiming for a medal there”. 

Steven was born in Donegal but now resides just outside Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. In 2017, his life would change forever when he was involved in a car accident that left him with a severe spinal injury. 

He eventually returned to work as a draughtsman, designing plans for modular housing projects. But, he explains, he needed something else in his life. 

“I’ve been rowing for… it’ll be three years this January. It’s mad. I took to it like a duck to water, as they say! It’s been a godsend. The sport has changed my life. For the head more so than anything else. 

“I went back to work after my accident and that was a great help, initially. But I just needed something else, do you know what I mean? I’ll go back to work at some stage down the line but, for now, it’s full-time with rowing.

“It’s a severe sport on the body. I can’t explain the training and how exhausted it leaves you. Some of the sessions, it could be up to three in one day, and you are completely spent. But it’s a release and you just feel so good. 

“And when you push yourself through that third session when you thought you’d nothing left in the tank well, you think to yourself, ‘there isn’t much I can’t do in life if I just push. It’s so rewarding”.      

Loughros Point Rowing Club has been with Steven on most of those steps, along the way, and he’s due to visit the club once again in the next number of weeks. 

“Donegal and Loughros Point have my heart. I’ve a Donegal jersey on right now, as we speak. Down through the years Shaun Molloy there, he’s been so accommodating to me any time I go up to visit the family in Ardara. 

“He’s dropped a rowing machine down to the house so I can train away in the mornings and afternoons. I remember when I was living in Donegal, just after my accident, he even asked if I wanted to see could they maybe raise funds for a paraboat. 

“That’s the kind of good people you’re dealing with in Ardara and in Loughros Point Rowing Club”.