Iain Kennedy celebrates sixty years of rowing in 2024

The 74-year-old stumbled across the sport at the age of fourteen in 1964 and has reached incredible heights although it’s clear his proudest achievement is still being involved today and helping the next generation develop down at the Erne waters for the Enniskillen Royal Boat Club.

“I was in boarding school in Coleraine, and you were incarcerated all week then I got wind of the fact that there was a rowing club, and it was an escape downtown, really, to get sweets, comics and see girls you know,” Kennedy said with a smile.

“So the club that we rode from was actually owned by Bann Rowing Club, and the school hired part of it, so that was how we had to get started.

"From then I just flowed along, I was pretty good at it. It was pretty satisfying, you’d go down the town with a bunch of mates during the week and on a Saturday morning and then you got to travel.

"We got to exotic places like Dublin, which for a border school like Coleraine was a pretty serious trip in the mid-60s, and it just trundled along from then on, all over Ireland.

"Galway, Cork, Waterford, Belfast, of course, Derry and Portora, which was a nice trip because we all got fed in the Melvin Cafe. The Lough Melvin Cafe was just up in the Diamond.

"We came down on the bus, had a feed and then rowed which was completely wrong.”

Kennedy tried his hand at a number of sports, including tennis, rugby and cricket but admitted he got the most satisfaction from rowing.

He still keeps active today and hastily rushed off to play tennis following this sit-down chat.

He met his wife Michelle at university and added she played an important role in his rowing career: “And then I married the right woman, of course, who rowed. Rowed a lot actually. I met Michelle on the Liffey. I was rowing in ’75-76.

"She was floating about, rowing for UCD.”

Kennedy’s success in the sport saw him sail into representing Ireland and sealing qualification for a place in the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal.

“Olympics ’76? I thought I was walking in the clouds,” he explained.

“I was down in Dublin first six months before I got a job in Guinness, the president of Irish rowing got me a job, in inverted commas, so I could row and train.

"So that was very exciting. I remember going to get fitted out in the Olympic blazer, and I thought, my God, you've arrived boy.

"But Montreal was terrific but didn't do that well. I think it was a first excursion into the Olympics for Irish rowing, really, since 1948.

"It was amateurish, really, to say the least. But, I kept going after that, we had a couple of good years and in '77 we were eighth in a world final.

"And then in New Zealand in '78 we reached the final, of the pairs, and that was really our apex.

"We slid down a bit, me and another guy from Queens, ended up at a four in Moscow in 1980.

"We raced well there, though, it was a boycotted regatta because the Americans and other countries wouldn't go because Russia invaded Afghanistan. Moscow was very severe. Spartan. I was there, but didn't really enjoy it.”

He went on to compete in the Moscow 1980 Olympics and has fond memories from his time at the competition: “I was seeing world-class athletes from all disciplines.

"We met a Russian weightlifter who was so big he had to sit in two chairs. And the café in the Olympic Village. Couldn't believe it.

"We bumped into Sebastian Coe Moscow in 1980 he didn't know us, but we knew him. That's part of the thing. You've got to learn to be part of that rather than feel in awe of it.”

Kennedy was in Paris this summer to watch Fermanagh’s Ross Corrigan and Nathan Timoney reach the final of the rowing Men’s Pair at the 2024 games.

“From where I was to see these guys up there reaching an Olympic final,” he added.

“It may never happen again, though they think it will, because they're going to go on.

"I found that quite emotional actually. Watching them reach the final because I had a small part to play in their initial days, you know, when they were 14-15, but that's not the point, really.

"We've over 100 rowers from various schools, which is another big part of why I do it. There's a lot of demand for year nine, which is 13-year-old, 13-14.

"You see, part of the thing about rowing is you're not trying to hit a ball or bump into somebody or avoid somebody.

"So we end up getting those people who are no less athletes than anybody else, you know, I call them water athletes, but they're really, some can play ball games, but they're not really, it's not their forte, you know.

"It picks up these people who are still keen to perform on the athletic vein, there’s no shortage of members.”

Kennedy was presented with his official Olympic number at the Enniskillen Royal Boat Club gala in May this year.

“Well it was a surprise, I didn’t know anything about it. I think I'm 391. Yeah. 391 in the Olympic list. Yeah.

"All these accolades are nice, but it doesn't give you a buzz that coaching does. That's where it's at, really. That's where it'll stop. I'm not stopping yet now.

"I do five days a week, Monday to Thursday and Saturday, and that's enough for me. I find the winter's a bit cold now. I’ll keep going till I fall in.”

Kennedy is very optimistic about the future success of rowing in the county: “My nerves are in shreds when I’m watching, so, I have to hide behind a bush or a tree or something.

"But seeing the younger ones getting a grip of it and wanting to do it, I keep telling them, ‘Look, if you're down here because you're ma or da are trying to please me that’s no good.’

"So the fact that they keep coming back is very satisfying, and then they're very optimistic.

"I mean, there's a lot of crap going around the world at the minute, but when you go down there and see the optimism of young people, it's not that they're oblivious to what's going on, but this is the fact that, just their optimism is unbounded.”

Kennedy still works at the Aisling Centre in Enniskillen and recognises the importance rowing and other sports can have for the benefit of people’s mental health: “Aisling Centre deals with mental health, and the rowing, in a big way, creates positive mental health.

"I mean sport does in general, but rowing, you couldn't beat it for young people, and then that sort of fits in with my thoughts on the Aisling Centre, where people presume whether they do get, not healed, but improved in the journey through life.

"There’s sort of similarities there. And the Aisling Centre is very interesting because it crosses cultural, perceived cultural divisions, you know what I mean, and we get that in this country, and everybody who isn't feeling good goes to the Aisling Centre.”

Asked what it takes to be successful in rowing, Kennedy responded: “It’s like milking cows. You know, a farm full of cows, you have to milk them twice a day. You get into the rhythm. You know. You just have to do it.”