It’s always been in Paul O’Donovan’s nature to softly deflect any matter of serious praise or adulation with a typically comical quip, but there is obvious hesitancy in him being in any way frivolous about the controversy which so unsettled Irish rowing last year. Especially when it comes to his older brother Gary.As Ireland’s most decorated Olympian – two gold medals and one silver across three different Games, and he’s not finished yet – O’Donovan may have remained above any of the cracks in the high-performance unit. Although speaking publicly on the matter for the first time, he does recognise that “no one wants anyone to experience anything like that in any sport”.Of all the early telltale signs that something wasn’t sitting right after the appointment of Antonio Maurogiovanni as high-performance director, in August 2017, there was a letter delivered to Rowing Ireland that November expressing a vote of no confidence in his position, signed by Paul and Gary O’Donovan, along with two-time world champion Sanita Puspure, among others.“We did, yeah,” O’Donovan recalls now. “We had some goals that we wanted to accomplish, so you have to kind of work towards those.“Back in 2017, Antonio came in initially, and we stated we weren’t very happy with his behaviour towards us. And in fairness, he left us off then, in a kind of a lightweight training group, which we were more or less able to do our own thing over most of the years.“Even within that, I was away a good bit. And then when I was there, we went on separate training camps a lot of the time to the other heavyweight group. And we had separate athletes’ representatives between the lightweight and heavyweight groups.“It’s what suited us, and over those years, we trained quite well and generally, I would have thought for the most part, had a reasonably good training environment. But I don’t think I thought about it that much, I wouldn’t be one to get too stressed out about things.”In January of this year, both Rowing Ireland and Sport Ireland appeared before an Oireachtas Committee to address concerns around athlete safeguarding and welfare within rowing’s high-performance set-up from 2021 to 2024. The concerns arose following a series of interviews with several Irish Olympic rowers, including Puspure, by Sunday Independent journalist Paul Kimmage.O’Donovan says he had no dialogue with Kimmage, although in one of the articles, Kimmage spoke with their mother, Trish O’Donovan, who said “they’re messing with his head”, in reference to Rowing Ireland’s treatment of Gary. The Skibbereen brothers rowed together when winning lightweight silver in Rio 2016, and again when winning World Championship gold in 2018.Asked now about how that sat with him, O’Donovan takes a long pause, before answering: “It’s hard to know. I haven’t thought about it recently that much ... But it is very unfortunate. No one wants anyone to experience anything like that in sport. Or not even just sport, just in any aspect of their life.”Ireland’s rowing coach Antonio Maurogiovanni. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho There is another pause when O’Donovan is asked if his brother Gary might ever row for Ireland again.“I don’t know, you’d probably have to talk to him about that, and his plans.”Last month, Fintan McCarthy, O’Donovan’s lightweight partner in Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, described the controversy as “probably the hardest few months of my career so far”. Again, O’Donovan says he was mostly off doing his own thing, including completing his medical degree and qualifying as a doctor in May 2023.“I suppose everyone’s experience is different. Fintan’s made mention of his.“I’ve been basically, for the last two years anyway, not at the training centre [in Cork], and even before that, even in the lead up to Paris, for most of the years, was spent kind of training on my own.“So I didn’t have the same experience that other people had. Which I don’t think is unusual in the circumstances.”As for the lessons, and the rebuilding of trust in the high-performance unit, O’Donovan still feels a little too far removed. He hasn’t rowed competitively in 11 months, all his focus for now on his medical duties at the Mater hospital in Dublin, his time currently divided between research and teaching UCD medical students.“Niall O’Carroll has taken over as new high-performance director, he’s done a bit of work in the past few months on athletes’ charters, preparing some documents on that. But they seem to be making an effort. And I believe there’s a review as well that they’re trying to undertake. Hopefully for the young people coming up, they won’t have to experience what some others have had to experience.”Although training almost exclusively on the rowing machine these days, O’Donovan, 32, does intend on being back on the water for the 2027 season, ahead of his quest to make the LA Olympics in 2028, and a possible fourth Olympic medal, only this time among the heavyweights as the lightweight events were discontinued after Paris.“It’s definitely going to be hard,” he says. “Nothing is easy in this world. So, time will tell. But I think Fintan has done a good job, last year he showed that he’s able to compete with the heavyweight guys.“I think the biggest challenge will be to try get into one of the Irish boats. But I’d like to win more, certainly. I don’t think anyone wouldn’t. I’m happy enough to try anyway, even if they don’t work out, I’ll try my best still.”– Paul O’Donovan was speaking at the announcement of the National Dairy Council partnership with the Sport Ireland Institute ahead of the LA Olympics in 2028.