2001: Sinéad Jennings win gold medal at World Rowing Championships

THE YEAR: 2001

THE MOMENT: Sinéad Jennings wins gold medal at the World Rowing Championships

Sinéad Jennings won a gold medal in the single sculls at the World Rowing Championship in 2001 in Lucerne.

In claiming the gold medal, the Letterkenny woman etched her name into Irish rowing history. She became the first Irish woman to win a gold medal.   

It was an amazing achievement for Sinéad, who was a student in Edinburgh at the time  and had only taken up rowing two years earlier.

MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY LORETO SECONDARY SCHOOL, LETTERKENNY

Athletics was her sport growing up in Letterkenny and she took up rowing shortly after moving to live in Edinburgh.

She had won a bronze medal also in the single sculls the year before at the World Rowing Championships in Zagreb, Croatia, in what was her first major success in a boat.

And she completed the full set of World medals with a silver medal at the World Rowing Championships in Linz, Austria in 2008.  

A talented all rounder Sinéad missed out on  qualification for the London Olympics in 2012 in track pursuit cycling by a fraction of a second despite a cut in funding.

After the disappointment of London Sinéad returned to rowing and her Olympic dream was realised at the Rio Games in 2016 at the age of 39.

Sinéad and her lightweight double sculls partner Clare Lambe made some splash in Rio. They finished second in their heat and third in the semi-final before finishing sixth in the lightweight double sculls final. Sinéad continues to take part in the sport and has not ruled out participating in the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

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