Matt Rowe
Rower // Men's Squad
Club: Leander Club/Oxford Brookes University BC
Hometown: Teddington, Middlesex
Matt took up rowing aged 14 in an effort to one day fulfil his dream to compete at the Olympics.
His first Olympic memory is when he was just 5 years old. His family took him to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games where they supported a close family friend and a personal hero of his, Rebecca Romero, who won a silver medal in the women’s quadruple sculls. Four years later they saw Rebecca, who had switched from rowing to cycling, win gold in the Individual Pursuit event at Beijing 2008. This inspired Matt even further to try to follow in her footsteps and one day compete at an Olympic Games.
Matt became obsessed with London 2012 and put a list of all the Olympic sports on his bedroom wall, determined to tick them all off to find which he was best at. After some trial and error and lots of taxi driving by his parents, he eventually came across rowing, and started at Kingston Rowing Club in 2014. Later, he went to sixth form at Shrewsbury School where they converted him from sculling to sweep rowing and he hasn’t looked back since. His family, Rebecca and the people at Kingston and Shrewsbury remain his biggest supporters. Matt’s paternal grandfather was Welsh and he is thankful to Welsh Rowing for their continued support.
