Great Britain names the team to travel to China for World Rowing Shanghai Sprints

July 14, 2026

The team includes two Olympic Champions and two reigning World Champions

11 British athletes will compete at the inaugural World Rowing Shanghai Sprints in September 2026. Great Britain qualified a team by finishing second on the medal table at the 2025 World Rowing Championships.

The World Rowing Shanghai Sprints is expected to bring together 88 athletes from the eight best teams in the world, competing across six boat classes in a fast-paced, knockout-format regatta. Races will take place over a 500m, two-lane course on a highly iconic waterway in the heart of the city, delivering an intense sprint-style rowing showcase at the highest levels.

The event will be staged annually and delivered in collaboration with the Shanghai Administration of Sports, the Donghao Lansheng Group – organisers of the recent 2025 World Rowing Championships and of the annual Shanghai Marathon – and with the support of the Chinese Rowing Association, as the culmination of the annual Head of Shanghai River Regatta.

George Bourne and Douwe De Graaf will return to the city in which they won their first world championship title. The duo were the stern pair of the Men’s Four that lit up the waters of the Shanghai Water Sports Centre last summer and have continued their unbeaten run throughout the World Rowing Cup season and Henley Royal Regatta.

2024 Olympic Champions Hannah Scott and Imogen Grant have spent 2026 racing in the Women’s Quadruple Sculls. Most recently, they struck gold on the Lake of the Gods at World Rowing Cup III, and won the Princess Royal Challenge Cup on the hallowed waters of Henley-upon-Thames.

Cox Jack Tottem will be back in Shanghai, where he steered the Women’s Eight to a bronze medal. He’ll reunite with familiar faces from that crew: Heidi Long, Eleanor Brinkhoff, and Megan Slabbert.

Tottem, Slabbert, and Long have been back in the Eight this season, winning gold at World Rowing Cup III. Brinkhoff has been stroking the new-look Women’s Four, leaving Lucerne with a bronze medal.

Speaking of gold medals won in Lucerne, two of the British Men’s Quadruple Sculls will also be on the plane to Shanghai. 2025 world silver medallists Cedol Dafydd and Callum Dixon will form part of the British contingent, as will Harry Geffen, who’s raced in the Men’s Eight all season, winning two silver medals in Seville and Lucerne.

“The Shanghai Sprints will be rowing on another scale,” said World Rowing President Jean-Christophe Rolland.

“Shanghai has a rich connection with our sport. This new event will both celebrate and strengthen that relationship while creating a spectacular new stage for the world’s best rowers and enabling a recurring showcase of our sport at the highest levels.”

“World Rowing’s Shanghai Sprints will showcase some of rowing’s best athletes at the centre of one of the World’s most vibrant cities,” said Interim Performance Director Tom Dyson.

“I am excited that our rowers have the opportunity to be part of the first edition of this spectacle of rowing. They will no doubt relish the chance to kickstart qualification year with some fierce racing and I look forward to seeing them, and the sport, in the spotlight of Shanghai.”