Paul O'Donovan admits a better shot at winning Tokyo gold is more important than an Olympic reunion with his brother Gary.
The Cork siblings captured the imagination of the nation when they won silver on the water in Rio five years ago.
Both are participating in a pre-Games camp in Spain before heading to Japan.
But Gary is going as first reserve while his younger brother Paul teams up with another Skibbereen man, Fintan McCarthy, for Team Ireland's lightweight double bid.
McCarthy partnered Paul to win the 2019 world championships and qualified the boat for Tokyo, but it wasn't until March trials that the pecking order was confirmed.
"It was very close," said Paul. "Naturally Gary himself would be very disappointed.
"He tried very hard, did a lot of training and basically gave it his best shot.
"And he's my brother, so you'd be used to rowing with him.
"But we've always said to each other that we want to be in the fastest boat, whoever that is, and if I’m not in it or he's not in it, that's just the case.
"So we spoke about it enough beforehand. Everyone kind of assumed, 'oh, they're the brothers, that's why they're in the boat together'.
"But we were like, 'that's not the case, we just happen to be the fastest two and if someone comes around and beats us, they get in'.
"Then that did happen so you have to accept that.
"Naturally I do like trying to win races. So if I can have a faster combination, then you're going to be a bit happier having a better chance of winning those gold medals.
"With Covid, you could end up with a positive test and Gary would be the next man in. He'd be a good man to have to step up to the mark.
"It's nice to have in the back of your mind if the situation arises. Hopefully it won't."
O'Donovan, 27, says that the boat is faster now than it was in Rio.
Before Rio, the O'Donovans were just about scraping onto the podium in terms of their race times until it clicked for them at a pre-Olympic camp.
Right now he feels the boat is at gold medal level.
"We seem to be more consistently in first place - so you could say we look to be a faster combination than the last Olympics."
Despite thriving in the Rio experience, O'Donovan feels Tokyo will be a different beast.
"They say they're all different in their own way," he reasoned.
"There was a pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, who said, 'a man can never fall in the same river twice'. I suppose that's because he's a different man.
"And the river is always moving and changing. That's a bit of the dynamic here. I’m a different person going into this Olympics.
"Being in Tokyo, and with Covid, will be a bit of a different experience.
"But fundamentally the racing is going to be very much the same as it always is.
“You’d want to have the weather conditions in the back of your mind, and the racing schedule around it.
"But we enjoyed that element in Rio because others get a bit more bothered by it. We were happy to see that. We know to remain calm."
