John Greene

Between 2017 and 2024, so that's the Tokyo Games, the Paris Games, the rowing Ireland high performance director, their top man was Antonio Mauro Giovanni.

He was fresh from working with the Dutch rowers, where not everyone had loved his work or thought he was necessarily easy to work with.

But on the face of it, with Ireland all was well.

Rowing Ireland won lots of medals.

So presumably Antonio was doing a great job.

Behind the scenes, however, many of the high-performance rowers were very unhappy.

They found Mauro Giovanni's behaviour corrosive in the extreme.

Several quit the sport, quit the programme.

Words like aggressive, unfair, biased, a bully.

These are terms you could deduce from their testimony.

Albeit, Mr. Mario Giovanni would presumably disagree.

He has said next to nothing in response to their complaints.

And he now works for the French Federation.

But if you want a flavor of his management style, here is audio.

And it's recorded by one of the rowers.

This is a meeting in 2019.

It's at a training camp in Italy.

And the team at large are trying to address the ongoing friction.

So again, 2019, Mario Giovanni started in 17.

Things are not going smoothly.