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'The fulfilment you get from life isn’t as high… I don’t feel like I’m giving anything back, or that I’m really contributing anything'

Nineteen months on from his last competitive outing, the day Olympic qualification was sealed, Philip Doyle returns to the water in Italy today. Tokyo 2020 has since been delayed, while life on the front line had to take precedence ahead of his Olympic dream. Neil Loughran talks to the Banbridge rower…

Banbridge rower Philip Doyle pictured training in the garage of his parents' house before eventually joining his Irish team-mates at the National Rowing Centre in Cork at the end of last year. Picture by Sportsfile
Banbridge rower Philip Doyle pictured training in the garage of his parents' house before eventually joining his Irish team-mates at the National Rowing Centre in Cork at the end of last year. Picture by Sportsfile Banbridge rower Philip Doyle pictured training in the garage of his parents' house before eventually joining his Irish team-mates at the National Rowing Centre in Cork at the end of last year. Picture by Sportsfile

PHILIP Doyle is back, and the ripples that greet his return today will wash away so much more than the frustration of 19 months treading water for reasons far bigger than rowing.

Olympic highs and lows, the waiting, the worries, it all paled into insignificance compared to the human horror that became a part of daily life. It seems surreal to think of it all now.

The World Rowing Championships in Linz, the last week of August 2019, and a silver medal in the men’s double sculls alongside Ronan Byrne secures the boat’s spot at Tokyo 2020.

The European Championships in Varese, Italy begin today and run until Sunday, the trainee doctor’s first taste of competitive action since the dream was realised then ripped away. Tokyo 2020 still hasn’t happened and, when it does, will be nothing like it was meant to be.

“I had everything lined up, I had been working hard, I was going to have maybe a couple of months to travel around Japan, rebuilding physically and mentally then coming back in sync for work. It was all planned out.

“Then after that Tuesday afternoon when the announcement came that the Olympics were being postponed it was just ‘right, scratch all that...’”

That disappointment was quickly parked when the emails and phone calls started to pour in. As the Covid-19 pandemic struck these shores, the NHS soon found itself overwhelmed.

Doyle’s foundation training had started with four months at Daisy Hill hospital and while there was no Covid ward in Newry, the redeployment of staff and the associated toll taken on the health service saw him working full-time, often through the night.

Living at his parents’ house in Banbridge, training took place in a makeshift gym in the garage. By the time Doyle’s Irish team-mates were returning to gyms and pools at the end of June, rowing still wasn’t on his radar.

A spike in case numbers in the autumn saw the 28-year-old moved to the bigger, busier Ulster Hospital. While his responsibilities still lay largely in the A&E and surgical departments, there were stints in the Covid ward there too as gaps in the rota needed filled.

If finding space in the schedule to train had been difficult before, at times now it was almost impossible, leaving little but that unshakeable sense of something significant slipping through his fingers.

“Two of our wards became Covid wards as numbers and cases started to spike in September October, November... logistically, it was very difficult.

“Resource management was the hardest thing, you were trying to get beds for people and we didn’t have any, or we did have beds but they were only for Covid patients. It was a nightmare in that respect.

“There were a few weeks where the hospital was very busy and we were having to stay over, come in early and I was on the phone to my mother a few times saying ‘I can see our chances waning a bit here’. I was losing confidence.

“Every day you’re in maybe 14 hours, and you’re maybe only getting one training session done - if at all. There’s almost a guilt to it. Like you’ve lost a part of your life, because it becomes nearly like part of your identity that you train that day and when you don’t, it really affects you.

“For a few weeks I had to just get the head down and focus on one thing at a time… it was a hard balance to strike.”

With Christmas approaching, however, there was a choice to be made.

Tokyo was less than eight months away and Irish team management wanted him down to the National Rowing Centre in Cork to step up preparations.

There could be no weekend shifts around his commitments in Cork, no on call, no nothing. His Olympic flame was already flickering in the wind but unless work, and the pandemic, were somehow placed to one side, it was in danger of burning out altogether.

The guilt previously felt about not being able to prepare properly with partner Byrne, about missing sessions, were instantly replaced by the helplessness of being so far from where he was also needed.

There was no right way to turn.

“The team made a decision that they wouldn’t be happy with the risk I would be taking if I went home and worked for a weekend… I was torn between the two, but this was always the plan.

“It’s tough. You get emails and you can see all the gaps in the rota and the shifts that need covered - you’re always aware of it. Before I left the hospital they were getting it tight for staff, but I’d already made the arrangements and people down here were relying on me coming back.

“Now, I’ll not be going back until August… it could potentially be the week after the Olympics. The medical year runs from August to August so you sort of have to jump in at the start, it’s very difficult to jump in halfway. Everything runs in four month rotations, and if you’re out of sync you need to fill the gaps to get back on track in between.

“The difference being down here now and being able to train full-time, it’s huge, but the fulfilment you get from life isn’t as high… I don’t feel like I’m giving anything back, or that I’m really contributing anything.

“What I’m doing now is for me, it’s not for anybody else, whereas before I was able to play my part and enjoy days… I was very mentally satisfied and fulfilled.”

Training his mind away from the pandemic has been one hurdle, a major one, but training his body to make up for time lost hit hard during those first couple of months back down in Cork.

Paul O’Donovan was a medical student when he and brother Gary hit the heights in Rio five years ago and while Doyle has faced stiffer challenges to bridge the gap created by such unusual circumstances, he insists it can – and will - be done.

“Paul’s an exceptionally talented rower, has a lot of natural talent and a good 10 years of hard training behind him. I don’t have that background and that base that he would have, but we seem to have been able to make up gaps.

“It took me a good six to eight weeks to get back on top down here – I wasn’t being completely dropped behind but there was a good while at the start where I wasn’t quite up to myself. It was a shock to the body too.

“I pushed too hard and ended up with a hamstring tendinopathy for three weeks which I tried to train through, then Christmas came and saved me a wee bit.

“Last year when I was working and training you were just sort of hanging on, getting out on the water when you could but most of the time just on the machine inside, trying to keep the fitness up and that raw power and strength.

“Now, in between sessions you’re resting and recovering where before, in between sessions, you were working all day. I’m sitting here now chilling out on the sofa, keeping the legs fresh. It means you can train harder and recover faster so you get much better adaptation to what you’re doing – the training actually impacts you more.

“Before I was just training so I didn’t lose any fitness or any power, now I’m training to improve those things. It’s much more aggressive, it hits the body harder but you’ve more time to recover and adjust.”

The European Championships will be used as a personal yardstick for all competitors, but none moreso than Doyle.

With the constantly shifting ground surrounding travel and quarantining, they felt it best to remain were they were for as long as possible afterwards. Once it’s over, therefore, the Irish team will remain in Varese for a further eight weeks of heavy duty training under the watchful eye of Italian Olympian Antonio Maurogiovanni.

“After the Europeans, we’ve only four more weeks in Ireland before the Olympics, so the time will fly in.

“We’ve had some pretty gruelling trialling processes over the last three months so I feel like I’ve been through the ringer with some of the competition we’ve had, I feel well ready for it.

“After so long off the water, it’s great to finally get back… I can’t wait for that feeling again.”

That feeling, though, will be wildly different from the last time he experienced it in Linz when crowds in grandstands roared rowers across the line.

Last month Japanese authorities told the Olympic and Paralympic committees that no international supporters would be permitted at Tokyo 2020, which gets under way on July 23.

Doyle wasn’t surprised. In truth, it is hard to view this year’s rescheduled Olympics for anything other than the anomaly the world hopes it is - a strange Games in the strangest of times.

Paris 2024, by which stage he will be 31, offers longer-term hope of the experience he and athletes from across the world have craved since first taking up their chosen disciplines.

Yet - like so much of the past year - adapting to an unfamiliar environment and reacting accordingly will, at least, be nothing new.

“To be honest I’m kind of glad they’ve said no to spectators because I had friends and family who were talking about putting quite a lot of money on the line to go over there and watch.

“It’s not cheap to get to Tokyo, especially for the Olympics, and in the back of my mind I was sort of thinking ‘what’s going to happen to that four or five grand that so and so paid out if I don’t live up to the hype?’

“It’s a bit less pressure having no spectators there, but at the same time spectators give you so much on the day. Coming into the last part of the race, it’s a huge mental advantage whereas now it’ll probably just be silence, the odd coach shouting.

“By now we’re well aware the experience of the Games will be very much diminished - the spirit of the Olympics won’t be there, the party atmosphere won’t be there, you won’t be meeting other athletes, there won’t be same camaraderie and mixing… it’ll just be get there, get it done and move on.

“Athletes don’t just dream of winning at the Olympics, they dream of experiencing it… it’s supposed to be a spectacle, the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony and everything in between.

“That’s what it’s supposed to be about but this year it’s going to be about something different - hope, showing things are getting back to normal, and the chance to finish something we all started.”