Kate and Chris Ware: A crew for life

Hear from Chris and Kate Ware, 2024 Club Crew of the Year nominees, about why they returned to rowing and what they love about the masters circuit

For six years, Kate and Chris Ware have been setting the standard at the British Rowing Masters Championships. One or both of them has won a medal at every Masters Championships since 2018, and in 2024 they won another title together in 2024, winning the Mixed MasD double sculls.

For the two scullers, the championships isn’t just about racing, but also everything else that comes with racing on the masters circuit.

“One of the things you realise when you start racing masters is the actual friendliness of the race,”

explained Chris, who started rowing at Pangbourne College as a junior.

“Lining up on the start, you are frequently chatting to other crews that you will be racing against. You can look across and you’ll see they’ve all got quite good pedigrees and you remember them from back in the day. 1000m is also manageable, it’s not too daunting,” he continued.

Despite only recently returning to rowing, the two have created a formidable partnership. The couple, who met while rowing over two decades ago have fully embraced the challenge of being teammates and partners on and off the water.

“We’ve learned to be patient with one another,” said Kate who learned to sweep during sixth form before continuing at Sheffield University.

“The best way to achieve a synced-up boat is not to be irritated with one another, we’re both learning because we are both competitive people and we have been married 25 years.”

Chris returned to rowing after their daughter took up the sport in Cambridge. He was sucked back in through coaching following a stellar career that saw him represent Nottingham and Union Boat Club as well as Great Britain at U23 level in 1992.

Chris will sit at bow and takes charge of the steering, one area of rowing that the two don’t always see eye to eye on.

“Kate can’t see me but there’s normally a lot of head shaking, particularly in regard to my steering!

“I remember there was a race over in Boston last year when I went inside the two buoys at Elliot Bridge and I could start to see her head shaking when we went inside the first one and by the second one her head was rocking around and expletives coming out,” Chris said with a smile.

Boston is one of several international cities that the couple have visited through rowing.

Chris continued, “We’ve done the Head of the Charles twice and got a great result last year.

“We were a little surprised to see Ollie Zeidler [and Sophia Meakin] turning up to race against us. That somewhat knocked our expectations, that was first place gone! We’ve also been to the world championships in Budapest and that was really fun.”

The Ware’s love to race and following their success at the Masters Champs last year, they continued to race well in to the summer and returned to Nottingham for the Club Championships in July, something they might repeat this year.

“There’s some talk we might go to the British Club Championships, just for a laugh,” said Kate.

“We did it last year and just missed out. We came fourth in a quad so we might do that but who knows. We really enjoyed that although it was a bit of a shock going 2000m, it’s probably why we came fourth!

“When you race young people there’s a definite difference around the 600m mark where we need to find a pace that’s sustainable and the others just carried on!”

With Henley Masters also adding a new mixed event to their Sunday schedule, there’s plenty of racing the two of them are eying up.

Kate concluded, “Wherever you are and whatever the event is, when you come of the water, it’s back to that friendliness again.

“Often, if you’ve had a really tight race, someone will come up to you and have a great chat about it, that’s the nice part, the good sportsmanship within it. It is competitive but at the same time it’s a really nice balance.”

Chris and Kate Ware will once again travel to the British Rowing Masters Championships 2025 where they will look to add more medals to their ever growing collection.