Gary and Paul O’Donovan deliver stirring speech after world championship win

"Arra, it should be fine all together. No bother with that... again."

Gary and Paul O'Donovan are world champions after blitzing the field at the world championship final. The brothers from Skibbereen defeated the Italians and Belgians to the gold medal, with three other leading rowing nations trailing in their wake. The O'Donovans romped home in the Lightweight Men's Double Sculls Final on day seven of the World Rowing Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. This has been another impressive championship from the Irish rowing team and the O'Donovans, who won silver medals at Rio 2016, leading the charge in Bulgaria. Following their winning row, Paul O'Donovan remarked that the pair had been out sampling the local night-life until 2am in the morning.

"We were out on the town with (the Norwegian team) last night and we said to them, 'Big day tomorrow. We have to be on form'. We headed away early, around 2 o'clock. We met the Norwegians on the way in and they said that by 3am Kristoffer (Brun) was buckled and needed to be substituted, early this morning. He was still hungover."

It was only as Paul finished that line that a smile broke out across his face Addressing their latest win, Gary said:

"I think we pulled our best strokes ever, out there, for 2,000 metres. This is my first ever world championship final and, I think, it's Paul's seventh. So my record is better than his, 100%. If I can keep that up, it'd be good!"

"It's exciting for the whole team," he added. "We have four boats here in the world championship finals... all the athletes around this Irish team, this year, have shown great independence and they've taken responsibility in themselves, and accountability for their own training and results. "It's evident that the team has belief and the athletes have belief, and this has been coming a long time." Inspirational stuff and what a couple of fine role models for Irish sportspeople, and fans. https://twitter.com/RTEsport/status/1040897714425233410 Roll on Tokyo 2020.