In Conversation with Anything but Footy Olympic and Paralympic Podcast
European Champions Rory Harris and Matt Rowe talk racing highs, Super Saturday and Olympic inspiration
As we look ahead to World Rowing Cup Varese in just a few days time, European Champions Rory Harris and Matt Rowe spoke to John Cushing and Michael Weadock about their time in Plovdiv and the big Olympic names who have inspired their journey to the GB Rowing Team.
Rory, who won GB’s first ever European gold in the men’s quadruple sculls, said the experience in Plovdiv was “a total whirlwind, if I’m honest. The regatta itself tends to be pretty stressful, but you have quite a high during the racing and it was really rewarding to win a gold. Then you have such emotion around it all, but then we come back to the normality of training before we get ready to go again in a few days time. The brilliance of sport is that there’s always something to look forward to and you do have to take a step back and try and enjoy the winning moments.”
Despite five generations of Rory’s family competing at Henley Royal Regatta, rowing wasn’t his first choice of sports growing up, “I always ran at school.” he explained, “I did cross country and stuff like that. But it wasn’t until I went to secondary school, that it became clear to me that I wanted to pursue Rowing. When you enjoy a sport, if you then start becoming quite good at it, it enhances how enjoyable it is.”
European Champion in the Men’s eight, Matt’s route to the GB Rowing Team was spurred on by a dream to one day compete at the Olympics, after watching family friend Rebecca Romero win medals in both Athens and Beijing. “I was only five, so I don’t really remember it all but I got very engrossed in her journey. And then by London 2012, I was 13, and watching the Olympics, I realized how many options there were. I had a London 2012 poster on my bedroom wall with all the sports on it and I remember looking at it and thinking, right, I’ve got years to try all of these. So if I can just tick them off one by one and see what I’m best at. So I tried lots of sports. I found rowing in 2014 after doing a learn to row course, it took over my life as I realised that was my best shot at maybe making the Olympics one day!”
More than ten years on from London 2012 and both Rory and Matt still recall the emotions they felt watching Super Saturday. Matt, who was watching it on TV from his home in Teddington said: “you don’t forget a night of TV like that. It was just a sporting pinnacle with all those British athletes performing at their best. It was unbelievable. We’ve got a gold letterbox in Teddington because of Mo Farah. And every single person seems to have seen him running in Bushy Park other than me. I think my mum must have seen him about 17 times, but I’ve never seen him in my life!”
You can listen to the full conversation with Rory Harris and Matt Rowe plus Sarah McKay, Daisy Bellamy and Benjamin Pritchard on the Anything But Footy Podcast
