O’Donovan And McCarthy To Rival Blackmore For RTÉ Sports Person Of The Year

Rachael Blackmore now has a pair of gold medal-winning Olympians breathing down her neck in the race to be crowned RTÉ’s Sports Person of the Year for 2021.

The Tipperary woman has enjoyed a stellar year in the saddle, becoming the first female jockey to ride a winner in the Aintree Grand National following a prolific week at Cheltenham, where she was crowned first female leading jockey in the Festival’s history.

BoyleSports had subsequently slashed her chances of being named Sports Person of the Year into a red hot 1/25 in what increasingly looked like a foregone conclusion, but the latest shift in the odds suggests there is now a much tighter battle in progress for the coveted accolade.

The momentum is now growing behind Cork duo Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy, who became the first males to win gold medals for Ireland at the Olympics since boxer Michael Carruth in 1992 when they rowed to success in the Men’s double sculls final on Thursday.

We had written this off as a done deal in favour of Rachael Blackmore after such an unbelievable year on the track, but Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy are right in the mix now after their Olympic heroics.

They have been slashed into 6/1 by BoyleSports to share the award at the end of the year having been 25/1 shots before the Tokyo Games, while Blackmore remains the frontrunner albeit with a much weaker grip on favouritism having been eased to 1/5.

Boxer Kellie Harrington has also plummeted into 10/1 from 100/1 as she gets her bid for a gold medal in the lightweight division under way in Tokyo on Friday.