Irish rowers Sanita Puspure and Aifric Keogh set two world records over the weekend
The pair were participating in Rowing Ireland’s Virtual Regatta which brought hundreds of competitors from around the country together competing on ERG machines.
Puspure and Keogh set record times in their half marathon (21km) age categories
Sanita broke the world record held by Lauren Schmetterling (USA of 01:18:14.8 in the 30-39 age category. The Ballincollig based world champion completed ‘the course’ in 01:18:13.6.
Aifric broke the record for the 19-29 category, beating Brooke Mooney’s (USA) time of 1:19:12.6 set this year when recording a time of 01:18:59.9.
Sanita said: “I started the session without much of a thought about records, but I felt good and decided to give it a try. Not a bad day on the rooftop!”
Keogh added: ”It was my first time doing a half marathon on the erg so I didn’t know what to expect. My plan was to keep the first half steady and then if I felt good to try to push on for the second half.
“It was fun to try a new challenge during lockdown but now that it's done, I won’t be in a hurry to do it again!"
Rowing Ireland's CEO, Michelle Carpenter said, "Rowing Ireland together with our partners Kinetica Sports were delighted to launch our first Virtual regatta this weekend. We saw this as an opportunity to engage all our members around the country aged from 9 to 90 together with our High-Performance Olympic bound athletes in a virtual regatta. We are overwhelmed with the participation and entries.
"I want to congratulate our athletes Sanita Puspure and Aifric Keogh who have broken World Indoor records this morning. While we await confirmation from Concept II, we will continue to watch excitedly as clubs continue to submit their entries over today and tomorrow. It may be another Bank Holiday weekend of lockdown for all.
"However, we at Rowing Ireland are delighted to continue to engage and to support our members during this challenging time for everyone.”
By lunchtime Sunday Rowing Ireland reported that the event - sponsored by Kinetica - had over 800 participants with the competition continuing until 5pm on Monday.