Ep 1| ‘They’re messing with his head’- Paul Kimmage’s journey inside the toxic world of Irish rowing’s High Performance Unit

Dear Peter, Merry Christmas. Hope all is well in Toronto. The grandkids are over for holidays and you'll never guess what young Theo found. What's this, Grandah? A crinkled copy of Ireland's own. Do you remember? Dio wouldn't miss a week. Can still hear him read no stories and ma'am the whizz of the quizzes. Ah, yet miss it. They say there's no place like home. So I sent you a little piece. This year's Ireland's own Christmas edition. Love, Michael. Dear Peter, Merry Christmas. Hope all is well in Toronto and the snow doesn't have you buried too deep. The weather here is as fierce as it was the day you left. I never can remember the year, though. Was it '77? Feels like a lifetime ago, anyway. I suppose it was. The grandkids are over for holidays and you'll never guess what young Theo found. So I was almost finished decorating the tree. Big seven footer stood on a chair trying to place the angel on top when all of a sudden Theo burst through that ornally sending me sideways asking, "What's this, Grandah?" I looked down and, to my surprise, wasn't he only holding a dusty, crinkled copy of Ireland's own. "Wow, that takes me back," I said. "Dear, remember? Dio wouldn't miss a week. Can still hear him reading no stories to sleep with that great, deep, dulcet voice of his. I reckon he should have given acting a go." And, ma'am, the whizz of the quizzes, I yet miss it. They say there's no place like home, so I sent you a little piece. This year's Ireland's own Christmas edition. Enjoy the stories, brother. I think I'll read Theo on later. I'll do my best impression, though I wouldn't hold my breath. Love, Michael. Ireland's own Christmas edition. What Christmas is all about since 1902. Just Between Us is the new weekly sex and relationships podcast from The Irish Independent, hosted by me, Jennifer Zamperalli. Join me every Thursday for an unfiltered conversation about life and love and good ol' fashioned s***. You'll hear from experts and the people who pretty much s*** for a living. We'll talk about intimacy and connection, how to make your partner s***. We'll even chat to people who s*** with s*** in the— Are you sure I can say all this on the radio? Listen to Just Between Us from The Irish Independent wherever you get your podcasts. Just a heads up, today's podcast features strong language appointments, so may not be suitable for younger listeners. Nestled in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, the Italian city of Arese makes for vintage postcard material. But it was there, in the winter of 2019, that an impromptu team meeting between the athletes and the coaches of Rowing Ireland turned sour. The man you hear is Antonio Maro Giovanni, then the high performance director of Rowing Ireland, tasked with preparing our athletes for the Olympic Games. But beneath the medals and the headlines, there was the fear and the tension. That doesn't motivate me. I can't sustain that until whatever Olympic Games showing you. Last time before the World Preparation you asked me whether I'm disabled because I can't pull my head off. In recent years, whispers have circulated that Ireland's most successful sporting program might also be its most toxic. And what happened inside that room in Arese would expose cracks in the system that few dared to acknowledge. I'm Kevin Doyle and today on the Indo Daily, I'm joined by the Sunday independence Paul Kimmage, whose investigation troubled waters a journey inside the toxic world of Irish Rowing, has revealed the human cost behind Ireland's Olympic medals. Paul Kimmage, when I think of Irish Rowing, and look, I follow all sorts of sports, but Irish Rowing is one that I wouldn't be an expert in. I know the names of the big guys, the Paul O'Donovan's, the Gary O'Donovan's, the Sinita Pospora. All I think about is success. I think it is probably the sport that we all latch onto when the Olympics come around, when the World Championships come around, and we have an expectation of medals, be they gold, silver or bronze. You have been writing at Lent about a whole dark backstory that none of us who follow it loosely like that could ever have imagined. Where does this even start? Well, it starts with what you've just said about why you're interested. You're interested in Rowing because for the last two Olympic cycles now, they've brought home gold medals, silver medals, bronze medals, and it comes around every four years. And that's what we latch on to. That's what interests us. And then the Olympics finish and it's grand. Move on. People attend all these lofty goals about the Olympics. It's all about taking part. That's all absolute shite, really. It's about winning medals and it ain't healthy. But these names that I've thrown out there that we know from the papers, from TV, from sports awards, they're real people and you have been meeting a lot of them over the last several months, couple of years, really. It started with an email. So it started with an email in February of 2023. I'd been in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks. I'd just flown home. I was due to have surgery on my hand and I got an email from a woman who told me, "Paul, you will be aware of my sons." And I most certainly was aware of her sons. And I drove down next day to Scoobering, actually just outside Scoobering, Lyshian, to the home of Trisha Donovan and her husband, Mick. And Trisha Donovan, of course, is the mother of the greatest rower of all time, Paul Donovan and his brother, Gary Donovan, Olympic Hero. Paul has two Olympic gold and Olympic silver and Gary has an Olympic silver. Yeah. And that Olympic silver, they won together. And the Olympic silver, they won together in Rio. That drew our attention to the sport. I mean, this was an Olympic silver medal. It was the first medal ever won in the sport in rowing. And these weren't just great rowers. They were great characters. And I think they captured the public's imagination with their great sense of humour. The food is fantastic there, like you can stay for breakfast, lunch and dinner with spuds if you like that. They're on the Graeme Norton show. It's a fairly simple sport, like. People do complicate it, like, your men says, "Go out to start and there's a hooter at the finish." Two great characters in a truly great sport. Well, tell me what was in that email. So that was the starting point. I need to speak to you, she said. And I was going, "We went down." And I said, "Okay, Trish, tell me, tell me what's going on." And essentially, it was a problem that our son was having with the high performance director. He was getting treated very badly by Antonio Maragiovanni. He was brought into Ireland to help beef up our rowing credentials in the high performance units. Well, respected, I suppose. Otherwise, they wouldn't have got the job. And when she sat down and tried to explain that, you know, Paul, there's a squad now have left the lightweight team, have left for Seville. Gary was told he was going to be going and they've left him behind. I said, "Okay, what do you mean he left me behind?" They told me he was going to be coming, then they just took off and left me behind. My sense of confusion that this was happening to an early superstar in a sport that we all love. I couldn't understand it. So, okay, what do you do next? As a journalist, you get this story and you're talking, okay, how do I develop it? Okay, well, I need people to talk. Well, Gary wouldn't talk. And you say, "Well, why wouldn't he talk? His mother's brought you down here. He's getting screwed over. Why won't he talk?" This is how everything works in this game. They're all funded by Sport Ireland, okay? And that's the mechanism used to keep their mouth shut. You couldn't get any of the rowers to talk. So, I couldn't take it anywhere. And yet, there was always a sense, even from the day that Antonio Morigiavani got the job, that there were problems in there. Well, take me back. He got the job in the summer of 2017. Is that right? Okay. What was the job? So, Antonio Morigiavani is a two-time Italian Olympic rower, okay? He went to the Sol games. He went to the Barcelona games. He went straight into coaching and did about three Olympic cycles as an Italian rowing coach. Spent five years in Australia. And then we get, there's an opening for a high-performance director at Irish Rowing in 2017. And he's brought in and he's interviewed for that. And he lands the job of high-performance director. Now, the high-performance director essentially sets the program, oversees the coaches, and he sets the tone basically for everything that's going to happen in the next Olympic cycle. And so, just to keep everyone's timelines clear here, 2017, that's the year after the Rio Olympics when Paul and Gary Adonavan had won their silver. And that was the first big hurrah, if you like, for Irish Rowing, or the current crop of rowers. That was the first big hurrah. And they bring in Morigiavani. So, there was a sense, really, that Paul and Gary and that medal, they were kind of outliers, that when you took them out of the system, they weren't like, you know, there wasn't actually much of systems in place, if you want, or practices in place that you bring on other rows. I think there was some conversation at the time about Ireland needing to target more minority sports as ways of getting medals. Is that fair? I love that word target, because that's, again, it's what it's all about. We're target. Well, why are we targeting them? We want medals. What do medals do for us? So, you're right. That is the word and that is the problem. They are targeted. But problems began to emerge, it seemed, pretty quickly. Morigiavani gets the job in June. His first contact with the Irish Rowers is at a training camp in Spain, right, a month before the World Championships. Now, important to say that they have actually had a brilliant summer. Before he comes in, he comes in in June, and they've already been to the European Championships and won two European Championship, maybe three European Championship medals. They're already doing great, okay? Morigiavani comes in, meets them for the first time at training camp in Spain, and this is astonishing. He treats them like they're two-year-olds. Oh, no, no, you're not training hard enough. I want you to change the sentence on your bow. Why are you using these German boats? Use the Italian boats, right? And he's literally three weeks before a World Championship, right? He's telling them they should, you're not training hard enough. Like, treat them like kids, which is... Have you done sport? Have you at a high level? At any level? Well, I have done it at lots of levels, but I wouldn't call any of them high. Anybody who would even... Off-leaf football wasn't great, Paul, let's be honest. Anyone who would even attempt to address, you know, highly successful athletes in that way at the first meeting, you think, honestly, this guy is mad. They know what it's about, but he's coming in and treating them like dopes. And, you know, they're not going to take it. So they have this first experience. They go to the World Championships and it's the same thing again, interfering, not letting them get on, but once they'll rip everything up. And they're saying, well, no, we're not having it. They get together, the six of them, six most successful rowers that we have, and the Royal Alert, the Royal Ireland, and the detail, the first experience of Meryl John, do you think? So those six are Paul and Gary, don't have a marker, don't have a Shane, or Driscoll, Denise Walsh, and Sinita Pospora. Pospora. Yeah. And this is just a few months into his... This is four months after he's been appointed. So he's still under probation, I presume. So he's still under probation and they're telling the board, listen, we're not having this guy, get rid of him. What did they say? So here's Sinita's impression, he rides the Campagnol, I mean, he had no dealings with him before. I rode an impact boat. And one of the first things was, why aren't you rowing a Philippi and Italian make? Then he starts making remarks about our training. She said, "The last Campagnol World Championships is basically sharpening a pencil. The work is done. You're not going to change very much." But he's just come to the door and he's telling us we're not training her. They give at least five or six examples of what they do not like about this, this guy. And very high up on the list is the way he talks to them. This abrasive manner that he has in his communications. And they don't want it. Surely that set off alarm bells in rowing Ireland? Well, it should have. It should have. What happened was the High Performance Committee messed. They got the letter and they said, it's sort of the double down. They've made the decision to appoint this guy. The rowers had made some points. And essentially, they dismissed the complaint. The scent was not going to be tolerated. So the mutiny is quashed. He's secure in his position. Tell me about some of the people here. Look, we've mentioned some of the perhaps better known names, but maybe tell me about Monica Dukarski. So Monica was born in Poland, spent her first six years in a gray Soviet-style apartment, two bedroom apartment in Poznan, and then came to Ireland as a 16-year-old in November of 2006. Her mother had come over a couple of months before. Her mother had just lost her job in Poland, had some friends working down in Kalaglan, had heard great things about it, came over herself for a couple of months, and then asked the family, listen, we can build a better life here to follow her over. So Monica arrived a couple of months later with her sister and her father. She had no English at all. They had a home, they built a home, or they had a home, found a home in Kalaglan. And she was introduced quite soon to the local Rowan Club, Kalaglan Rowan Club, and the coach there, Mike Fleming, and slowly and painfully started rowing and became very good. She couldn't speak the language, she was struggling in school. She got into a boat, she picked up the hours, and this is actually the only aspect of her life at that stage that she felt she had control over. This is the perfect Olympic story so far, Paul. It is, though. These are the things that Netflix make documentaries about, these kind of stories. It's this fabulous coach, Mike Fleming, who plants that seed over her. She wins the National Championship a year later, and she says, do you think I can go to the Olympics? And he says, absolutely. Now, because of her background, because she's come from Poland, she actually doesn't qualify for an Irish passport until 2012, and only comes into the Irish team. She's won seven National Championships, but it only actually qualifies to row for Ireland when she gets the passport. So her first shot at the Olympics is the Rio Olympics. She goes into the Rio squad and starts training in the hope of going to the Games at that time in 2016. She's a heavyweight rower. The structures weren't in place to bring her on, and do enough for her to bring her to the Games. So she was the scourge she left. She became, actually was secretary of the Rowan Club in Kellogg and was very much still involved at rowing, still loved rowing, went coast to rowing, and then here is that Margie Avani has been appointed as the High Performance Director. She goes to a workshop down in the National Rowing Centre. She hears him for the first time, and she listens to him for the first time, and she could not be more impressed. This is the guy she said, and the love for rowing just flowed out of him. This is the guy that can change Irish rowing. And then a couple of months later, after that World Championships, he gives her a call. He knows that she's got talent, and then she enters the program. Initially, she says, again, very helpful. At the start, he was very nice, you know, like he was attentive. I wouldn't even say accommodating, but like he worked with you, you know, like so, like, let's say if you were like, oh, this doesn't feel right, he was trying to kind of figure it out what was going on. And then slowly over time that changes towards the latter stages. It was very much about, this is how it is, if you are not happy, leave. So there was a lot of kind of intimidation in terms of like staring you down, making example of you in front of the team. And so her target at this point, having missed out on Rio, is presumably get to Tokyo. Yes, absolutely. The target is Tokyo now. And the first big step, I suppose, was the Olympic qualifier, Austria, in 2019. And she's in a pair, which is a pair as a double with alien Crowley, who also helps from Clarkland. And the two of them qualify the pair for Tokyo. So now they have a boat qualified for Tokyo, this pair. But the way it works is you qualify the boat, but that doesn't mean you qualify. You still have to actually keep performing in order to get in that boat in order to row at the Olympic Games. So she qualifies, and now she notices a change, because the heavyweight squad has been widened now to eight rowers. And there are two boats, there's a four and there's a pair. And the eight rowers essentially are competing with each other to get into either the four or the pair. And then it's the coaches then to decide, well, okay, we're going to make one of these the priority. So they decide, well, we think the medal is in the four or we think the medal is in the pair. And they put all of their energies, which they shouldn't, into either one or the other. Monica and alien are in the pair. They just qualified the boat. Having just qualified the boat, they expect, okay, we've set the standard here, we are the best rowers, where they're going to encourage everybody else to come to air level. That's not what happens. That's not how Margie of any works. He's got a watch. He's got a training program. And every time they get into the boat, he clicks the watch, he's looking at what they're doing. Every session, every session they're timed, click, click, click. And instead of bringing the rest of the rowers, the younger rows have committed up to Monica and aliens level, he drags them down, he undermines them, which doesn't make sense. This guy has no management skills, no personal skills at all. He has a watch and he lives by the watch. He's a training program, which is absolutely brutal. And they start breaking down. I don't understand, Paul. You're going to have to explain to me a little better. Surely, if you're out there with your watch, the aim is to get faster. And that's what he's driving towards, no? Well, if you're out there with a watch, okay, and if I've just said a brilliant time today, if you're expecting me to have the same time tomorrow with a watch in your hand, then you don't understand when you need to rest and recover. He was of a belief that you keep going until you get injured. So there wasn't any sort of prevention mechanisms or anything like that. You keep going until you can't no more. And then, if you get injured and you get back, you don't get back fast enough, it's the physiosport. So he had no facility or ability to be able to say, okay, they've done this now. Let's ease off a little bit. How are you feeling, girls? What are we doing today? You've got to try Monica, sit this one out. No, no, no. He keeps grinding on them all of the time until they break down and they break down. So two months after they qualify, let me tell you what happens next, because this is truly, this is truly extraordinary, Kevin. Two months after they qualify, there's a training camp in Ferrati, right? There's a training camp in Ferrati. And again, they've got this thing called a battle puddle. So they're on for about 20 kms. And he wants them basically at each other's throws from the moment they start until the moment they finish. It's not like, you know, a long endurance, you know, just go do it, you know, no, no. He wants them fighting each other, okay? So they set off and Monica and alien drop behind about five or six lengths behind after a kilometer maybe. And he stops them. He's got a megaphone in his hand. He's following them in the lunch. He's got a megaphone in his hand, right? And he stops them and he starts shouting at them. What's going on? No, I got a problem. What do you mean you've got a problem? And he starts, absolutely, fucks her over from a height. He absolutely lost his shirt at me. He started buying the motorboat, telling me to stop fucking crying, keep fucking moving. And if I'm not happy, I can, I can go home. So that was the kind of moment for me where I was just like, who am I dealing here? And then he had a conversation with me afterwards. And he said to me that I need to accept where I am in the pack. And if I do that, I will be happy. Now I didn't believe this. And then I found someone else who had seen it. Another one, Ronan Bourne, who was on the world board the same day, who actually seen this. And he said he screamed abuse at two girls in the boat who were actually crying at this stage. I didn't think, oh my God. Well, that's, that's unbelievable. Anyway, then there's a meeting called that evening. Okay. There's a meeting called that evening. And Monagio, Monagio Avani and the two other coaches, Dave McGowan, Australian, and Giuseppe De Vita, the Italian race bro and Arattus meeting. So you've got the eight rowers, the eight three bro's and the three coaches. And Monagio Avani stands up and starts talking at the meeting. Now, here's the thing, Kevin, right? Here's the thing. So again, when I meet Monagio, she's telling me about this. And I'm listening to what she's saying. I think, wow, geez, that's, that's, that's, that doesn't sound right. But then, then she's like, do you want to hear it? I actually have a recording of this meeting as well. And like, just to give you an example of intimidation. She didn't record it. That was the interesting thing. She didn't actually record it, but she had a recording. Here's how Monagio Avani starts the meeting. And not because I'm arrogant. It's not arrogance is, and please look at me. Everyone, Monica, look at me. Everyone is to look at me. What strikes me straight away when I hear that is the tone. Okay, he's sitting in a room with eight adult people. Natalie Long is a qualified radiologist. Monica has a PhD. Africa was business, you know, highly qualified, highly intelligent people. And listen to the tone as he's addressing them. I don't like people that look down when I'm talking or when someone talking. That's lack of respect. Look at me. That's a lack of respect. Now this is a guy who five or six years earlier has had megaphone as well. And he's fucking swearing at Monica. And now he's talking to her about respect. And she was expecting an apology at this meeting. She was expecting an apology. He said, you know, look, he lost his shit that morning. I expect him. He's called the meeting. We're going to go in there. We're going to sit down. And now he's going to call the jets. Absolutely. Cool the jets. And now let me just explain what's happening there and where we are with the program. So they're all looking at him. And he spends 80 minutes basically laying down the law of what he expects from them. This is what I'm expecting from this group. Ruthless. I'm expecting you be ruthless. Now injuries. Oh, you're too kind of injuries. And then he opens it up for questions. And I think we've got a clip here of what happens next. I don't really have a question, but I have a comment. Because one thing I struggle with is like how we get spoken to every now and then. And I don't think that it's consistent. Like every athlete gets the same treatment with how we get spoken to. And I really struggle with that. So like some athletes get shouted at, some people get sworn at and other people get molly-cottled. If all of us got sworn at, then you can kind of like grit your teeth and get through it. If all of us got shouted at, then you could get used to that as well. So Paul, the issue she's raising there is that there's double standards. There's no equality within the team. There's favoritism. So some people are given better treatment than others. But it's also the issue she has is the way they're being spoken to. That's the essential issue. Really get a huge admiration for Natalie Long, okay? She's in there. They've had 20 minutes from this bully-shouting at them. And it takes great courage to stand up and say what she did. The art of coaching, because to me is an art, can be fulfilled in a different way. Depends from the moment, depends from the person, and depends from the goal that you want to achieve. You can't have a tape, same tone, same thing. If you are on 22, for most of the session, and I'm telling you to go down on 20, and you're not going on 20, and then again, and then again, and then again, and I will shout you and will say, "Stop." Because it's not fair that for the other player, he's not doing the session at this club. Well, the transcript and that is clear. And you can see what people said in the meeting. The words cannot portray the tension in the room. No, absolutely. And it shouldn't be like that. I'm professional. I'm very professional. That is part of my professionality. If you know better coaches than me, that have better professionals than me, feel free to go with him. This is one. Two, if I want to know the way in which you want me to coach, and if you won't always always cuddle, I will give you just cuddle. No, I don't want to cuddle. You know that, because I don't want what I received this morning either. You know what wasn't what would have been my expectation this morning? Fucking you. I will show you that you are wrong. And I'm right. That doesn't motivate me. I can't sustain that until whatever Olympic Games showing you each time, that I can whatever do something that you think I can do. Like, it shouldn't be like that. I mean, that is never going to produce anything. That's the opposite to what coaching should be. And there's another moment. There's another really huge moment later piece where she's raising these issues and the issues they have with them. And he says something quite extraordinary. "Natalie, my job is to make you uncomfortable. You can't go on 20 or you struggle to go on 20 because you are uncomfortable to keep that speed as the other pairs on 20. My job is to keep you into the struggle, face and zone, because that will give you the best improvement." "Oh, your job is to make me play better. I would have thought make me uncomfortable. How was that going to prove me?" "Push your boundaries." "Push my boundaries. Okay. So push my boundaries. You've got a back problem. You've got a stress coming on. I want you to ignore that and keep going until you're injured, okay?" "I understand what you're saying there, but do you accept that sometimes a coach will see their role to put someone outside their comfort zone so that they can achieve more than they thought possible?" "You don't think these rowers have been outside their comfort zone. From the moment they sit in a boat, you are outside your comfort zone. Nothing about this sport is easy. Nothing. It's like if you're ridden the bike for the first time or tried to race the bike for the first time, the moment you sit in the boat, everything aches when you get off a bike or when you get out of a boat. They have lived with this comfort. They know what it is, but that's not what this car is pushing on them. And what happens next then is a classic example of it. So the meeting ends. Monica feels completely undermined. Confidence is shattered. She starts back rowing again and the physiotherapists are being told, "Listen, don't go near them unless there's something really serious." She gets a back injury. She's off the boat there with a back injury. She comes out of the square with a back injury. She was gone. Then Covid hits in February of '21. If Covid hadn't hit when it did, Monica Dukerska would never have gone to the Olympics. She was mentally destroyed by the way she'd been treated. Physically, she had broken down from both the training load and the stress that was being imposed on them through what he was asking in terms of, "Push through your injuries until you can't push anymore." And that was it. She was done. And then the period then, when they were away from the rowing centre, she managed to get herself back together. She'd been talking to Kate Kirby. And one of the other psychologists, clinical psychology, who works at the Institute of Sport at Sport Ireland, is a chap called Paul Gaffney. And she started talking to Paul Gaffney and he played a huge role in essentially putting her back together again, stabilising her mentally and getting her into a state where she wanted to go back rowing again. And you'll say, "Okay, why didn't she say something about it then? Why didn't she come to Paul Gaffney and say, "Listen, you're not going to believe this. I've recorded this bully. She does that. That's it. She's gone. There's no Olympics for her. All she's worked for since she started the sport is gone. That's how it works. They open the mountain, they're gone." And she said she couldn't do that. So the Olympics has spawned until 2021. She comes back into the programme. But for the moment she comes back, she is being treated like a second-class citizen. And the offshoot of this is she is not alone in the boat. She's in a pair with Alien Crowley. And Alien Crowley then suffers that sort of... Oh, it's because Alien says, "Listen, you know, Monica, you know the difference between when you're in the boat with me and somebody else is night and day. I can see what's happening there. I know they're the way you're being treated. And now it's affected me because I'm not getting the coaching." So her theory was that because Maria Giovanni was treating Monica unfairly, that that was now rubbing off on her teammate. That was a fact. It was a fact that was happening. So what happened was the four qualified at the last qualifier before the games, they become the priority now. And the pair are kind of an afterthought, right? So now there's two balls going. But Maria Giovanni wants to put all of the emphasis and all of the support into the four. Now, as the two best rowers of the year are two of the best rowers, they should have been in the four then. They should have said, "Right, okay, Monica, okay, Alien, you're going into the four." And that's what happens. They have trials. They have trials between the eight girls for the four places and Monica and Alien are in the fastest bow. That doesn't suit them. He doesn't like them. And he takes them out of the bow. Paul, one of the things, let's talk about Monica, her performance and her experience at the Olympics. But actually, I think there's one important point which I picked up on when reading your article on this, which was the captaincy of the team heading into those games in Tokyo. Monica got selected by her peers. Yeah. So Maria Giovanni decides they should have, after the team is selected for Tokyo, they should pick a men's and women's captain. And he proposes Phil Doyle, Africa and Paula Donovan as the three candidates. Monica's looking at this thing. Well, I think I'd like to be a candidate. So she proposes herself to go on the ballot and she's put on it. And the guy running it is the team manager from Lymec Fergal Ocalaan. Maria Giovanni asked him to collate the votes and to conduct this process of who they want as their captains. And on the first vote, the two clear winners are Monica and Paula Donovan. And Maria Giovanni sees this, doesn't like it, tells Ocalaan to do it again. And she wins the women's vote by an even bigger margin the second time. So Monica then is the women's captain for Tokyo. He calls it up, "Listen, I'm not sure about this, Monica. I think it'll distract me. I want to do it, I want to do it." And she goes to Tokyo and she writes this tremendous speech, tremendous speech that she's going to give the girls before they compete in Tokyo. And they get the Tokyo marriage vandal off, get all that. We're not going to bother any of that crap, right? So he dismisses it purely because of his dislike for Monica. So they go to the games and the first medal of the games is the women's four. And this is, in a sense, you could say it was vindication for Maria Giovanni. He's put his faith in the four girls. In the four, they win bronze medal, tremendous performance, great excitement. Monica and Eileen are in the pair later that afternoon or later that morning. So they're actually still back at the Olympic Village when the four are out at the roaming venue. Nobody has actually booked anything to take them out. There's no bus or car or anything organized. So now they're in the panic. They run back to the Olympic Village. They go to the Team Ireland quarters there and they find one of the guys there who drives them out. So now they're late and they're in the car. This isn't great. And then they get there and then one of the coaches starts faffing over. They put that area ahead and he's upsetting them even more. So it's as obvious as day that nobody gives a shit about them, right? And what they've spent their whole fucking life trying to do. And, you know, it's just a brutal experience for them. And they come home and they go back to Cloggin. So they arrive at the airport and it's classic. This is the classic every time. I saw her first hand in Barcelona when Michael Crute and Wayne McCulloch came back in and Wayne and Michael were told, right, you guys out the front. Everybody else out the back door. So you don't win a medal. That's it. You can go out the back door. So Monica then is shuffled with all the other verticommas losers out the back door. So she's then is driven back. Mike Fleming has come up from Cloggin to bring her home. She goes home. Collaglin embraced them. Alien, alien again. There's some alien crawlies from Collaglin. Collaglin embraced them both. There's a parade around the town. They bring them, give them flowers, present them. You know, this is a great thing. Except that's not how the girls feel. Yes, it's lovely that they're being celebrated, but nobody knows how badly they've been treated. You wanted us to be the best experience of your life. Yes. So, kind of all everyone else expects us to be the best experience of your life. Like, anyone asks me even now, like, oh, you're right, the Olympics must have been great. You just brushed it off into the eye. Yeah, it was great. You know, like imagine even the awkwardness of a conversation. If you were told around, they said, well, actually, it was true shit. How do we even begin to explain that to people who see you go to Olympics, achieving these great things, how badly you've been treated? And this comes full circle, Paul, to where we started this conversation, because we have lots more to talk about in part two. But I asked you at the very start, or I told you, that when I think of Irish rowing and I think of the Olympics, all I think is good news. And I sit up there as an editor in our newsroom, doing up those front pages with the guys, with their medals. And then I read your piece, and the quote from Monica, which really jumped out at me, which said, "You want people to see that you've achieved something." So you say, "Yeah, it was great, and you feel like a fraud." Yeah. And that's so, isn't that sad, isn't that just really sad? My God, it's crushing, really. The key is what happens next. So Monica's had this brutal experience. She wants to go to Paris. But she knows if Mora Giovanni is in place, she hasn't got a chance. So she wants to do something about this. And she's contacted by Michelle Carpenter from the CEO of Rowing Ireland. She said, "Listen, there's going to be a survey done in terms of what your experience was. You'll be getting an email soon." And a month passes, she doesn't get an email. Nobody contacts her, okay? And that's interesting, because this survey is done about the Olympic experience, and nobody contacts her or any of the other rows who've had bad experiences. There are nobody contacts the alien, Ronald Bourne, Senita Pusbur. Okay, right. Five months later, the results of this thing are published. The highlight is how well the rowers have performed. They won medals. And what happens at Rowing Ireland? Sport Ireland increased the rowing Ireland funding by 75%. So instead of bringing Mora Giovanni in and saying, "Oh, hold on a second here. We've heard from our clinical psychologists there are massive problems in the way you are working with this team." Now, that doesn't happen. It's, "Oh, you've won us a gold medal and a bronze medal in the Women's Four. Great. Here's more money. Carry on doing what you're doing, and carry on." He did. Coming up in part two of this Indo-Daily special, he breaks down. He actually breaks down and starts crying. And Ronan sees this. He sees Guy Adornovin, Olympic silver medalist, breaking down. He was like, "I've been trained here all my life, and he's like, 'That's been in issues.' And all of a sudden, you are here trying to tell me what to do." And he was like, "I might go on fucking mad." And he started crying, like, he brought down crying, and he was shouting at Michael, and he brought down crying, and Michael just fucking walked away. And we just left. During the course of this investigation, Rowing Ireland responded to queries from the Sunday Independent. Chief Executive Michelle Carpenter said the welfare of everyone involved in our sport is an absolute priority. This is particularly critical within the high-performance system, given the inherently intense and rigorous nature of competing at the highest level. She said she was committed to fostering an environment where competitive excellence and holistic well-being are intrinsically linked, and where all concerns are addressed with the utmost seriousness. She added, "We are committed to implementing and continually evolving our practices in line with international best standards, and we sincerely regret any occasion where an athlete has felt unsupported or experienced distress within our programme." In relation to the 2017 letter from athletes to Rowing Ireland, Carpenter said it did not raise welfare issues. Rowing Ireland became aware of specific concerns regarding the high-performance programme in March 2021. Following this, we immediately engaged with Sport Ireland to ensure comprehensive support for our athletes. Carpenter said the decision to renew Antonio Morigiovanni's contract in January 2021 prior to the Tokyo Games was considered as the best course of action based on the information available at that time. The coaches referred to in this article were also asked to comment. Dominic Casey said, "Regarding the allegations concerning conduct and culture within the high performance programme, I would have taken any substantiated allegations of inappropriate conduct very seriously. My focus was on the well-being and performance of my athletes. My primary role was the lightweight programme, which operated somewhat separately within the broader high-performance structure. We've achieved approximately 50 medals across major competitions, including Olympic and World Championships. The recruitment of Antonio Morigiovanni is wholly a matter for Rowing Ireland." Sport Ireland responded to the queries from the Sunday Independent. When Sport Ireland heard of athletes' concerns at Rowing Ireland, we took their concerns seriously and responded promptly. Sport Ireland raised athletes' concerns with Rowing Ireland on multiple occasions and provided them with a range of supports to assist them in addressing these matters. Sport Ireland was made aware over the Tokyo and Paris Olympic cycles that some athletes were unhappy with the leadership of the Rowing Ireland high-performance programme under Antonio Morigiovanni. Communications took place between the senior leadership of Rowing Ireland and Sport Ireland about the concerns of the athletes and the responsibility of Rowing Ireland to resolve them satisfactorily. In relation to the appointment of the Italian High Performance Director, Sport Ireland said the recruitment of Antonio Morigiovanni is wholly a matter for Rowing Ireland. My thanks to Paul Kimmich. I'm Kevin Doyle and this special episode of the Indo-Daily was produced by Ian Doyle, researched by Dave Hanratty with sound design by John Smith. Archived clips were from Ortee Sport, Virgin Media News, the BBC, the Olympic Games and the Irish Independent. We want to earn your trust and our members of the Trust Project so you can see our ethics policies at independent.ie/ourjournalism. And if you enjoy the Indo-Daily, don't forget to follow and leave us a review. Dear Peter, Merry Christmas. Hope all is well in Toronto and the snow doesn't have you very too deep. The weather here is as fierce as it was the day you left. I never can remember the year though. Was it 77? Feels like a lifetime ago anyway. I suppose it was. The grandkids are over for the holidays and you'll never guess what young Theo found. So I was always finished decorating the tree. Big seven footer stood on a chair trying to place the angel on top when all of a sudden Theo burst through that ornally sending me sideways asking, "What's this, Granddad?" I looked down and to my surprise wasn't he only holding a dusty, crinkled copy of Ireland's own. "Wow, that takes me back," I said. "Dear, I remember. Dare wouldn't miss a week. Can still hear him reading our stories to sleep with that great, deep, dulcet voice of his. I reckon he should have given acting a go. And ma'am, the whizz of the quizzes I yet miss it. They say there's no place like home, so I sent you a little piece. This year's Ireland's own Christmas edition. Enjoy the stories, brother. I think I'll read Theo one later. I'll do my best impression, though I wouldn't hold my breath. Love, Michael. Ireland's own Christmas edition. What Christmas is all about since 1902.