Gary and Paul O’Donovan won the silver medal in Rio in the men’s lightweight doubles sculls on Friday from Rio, marking the first rowing medal in Irish history.
Afterwards, the brothers from West Cork gave a terrific interview with an Irish television station, RTE Sport. It begins with Paul asking, “What’s the craic?” (an Irish idiom for “gossip”) and with Gary reassuring the TV hosts that they are, indeed, in Rio.
It only gets better, if a bit unintelligibly Irish, from there.
Slate’s Josh Levin made a valiant effort to transcribe Gary’s full response, which includes meanderings about Snapchat and urinating.
Here’s Gary’s response (as transcribed by Slate):
Erm, I’ve been shook enough now to be honest because of the race thing and a bit tired now and the legs are like jelly, but, uhm, yeah, I suppose we did a bit of celebrating and did the podium thing and got to put on the podium pants as well, so that was quite nice, and saw the mother and the father and a few other people and took a few pictures and that and then, uhm, I had to go and do this doping control thing so I was there for an hour or two trying to take a pee then into a cup for them so, uh, after about ten litres of water as well so, uhm, full up now to be honest. Gary, it’s like great craic though isn’t it.
This isn’t the only hilarious interview the brothers have given in Rio. Immediately after taking the silver, practically still out of breath, they joked that they were a bit disappointed with not getting gold because the Irish boxer Micky Conklin had told them that he would “box their heads off” if they didn’t bring gold back to Ireland.
And here’s an interview, also from RTE Sport, with the lads after they qualified for the Olympic final, in which they talk about eating steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, despite the interviewer’s insistence they get serious for a moment.
Despite winning an Olympic silver medal, the lads haven’t always been particularly, uh, focused on rowing. In an interview earlier this summer, their coach revealed that a few years back, the brothers once spent too long at a pub the night before a national championship race, and wound up sleeping in and missing the final.
From Balls.ie:
“It was the national championships and they went out on the piss the night before the race and they didn’t wake up and missed the race and the club got fined.”
In other words, the Irish brothers are nothing more than Irish brothers. That includes sometimes beating the sh*te out of each other (their words, not ours).
From Balls.ie:
“We’re always beating the shite out of each other and stuff like that out on the river and just causing a bit of trouble.”
Cheers to Gary and Paul on their silver medal. May they continue to give interviews throughout their celebrations – however long they may last.
[Source: Business Insider]
