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Way two go
by Maggie Barry
An argument with his brother led George Bridgewater to transform himself from overweight couch potato into world-class rower intent on winning gold in Beijing this month.
At 100kg, 2m-tall George Bridgewater is in the best shape of his life as he and Nathan Twaddle prepare to battle the Aussies in the men’s coxless pair. With his hulking “seven-axe-handle-wide shoulders and wineglass waist”, the 25-year-old Wellington rower looks like a classic Olympian now, but as a teenager he was overweight and under-motivated.
His attitude to life changed one night while watching sport on TV with his younger brother. “I was having an argument with Sam about who was better at what sport and neither of us was backing down. I found myself saying that I was good at rowing and could potentially go to the Olympics one day. Sam thought that was seriously amusing. And to be fair, anyone would’ve struggled to believe that I could do it – I was physically such a contrast, it was almost surreal even to think about me being an Olympian. In the heat of the moment I said something I wouldn’t normally say, but it put it into perspective for me that it was a possibility.”
The oldest of three boys, George Spencer Bridgewater has always been big, coming into the world at 9lb 12oz and shooting off the Plunket weight chart within a month.
“I loved my food and grew outwards before I grew upwards, possibly because of my 12 Weet-Bix every morning, which I thought was normal. I was a big, hefty boy, about 6'2"; at my heaviest in the rugby season I was 107kg. I was a lock in the third XV and would enjoy a big feed of hamburgers after training not very hard.
“I was very lazy, and it wasn’t uncommon to get a couple of 1.5-litre bottles of Coke and polish them off watching a movie on TV in the afternoon. At school I did okay when the pressure came on, but unless there was pressure I found it very hard to get motivated.
“I had a big growth spurt at the end of the sixth form. I came back after the summer holiday to find I’d grown four inches and was taller than everyone else at school. Sometimes I was self-conscious, but maybe that was what helped fire me up to be successful.”
Unlike most of the Olympic rowing squad, who have been involved in the sport since their early teens, Bridgewater didn’t set foot in a boat until his final year at school. “I’d only planned to go down for one day to try it out to get Dad off my back, but as soon as I went out on Wellington Harbour, I loved it,” Bridgewater says. “The coach, Noel Lynch, was a real tough bugger. He’d make us show up at 5.30 on a Sunday morning and he sure could inflict pain, making us run or row hard, and we were pretty scared of him.”
With its own lagoon and one of the best locations on the Wellington waterfront, the Star Boating Club has developed some promising young rowers. Bridgewater was selected to row in the Wellington College novice four and the early mornings paid off when they surprised everyone with a win in the Maadi Cup in March 2000.
“I hadn’t ever won anything before and it was very exciting. I remember watching the video of the race over and over until the tape broke. I was 16 and really looking for something to be successful in. I was getting sick of my lifestyle and definitely felt I wanted to do something constructive. I saw rowing could give me that.”
He rose rapidly to elite level and was selected the following year for the World Rowing Championships under-19 eight and again in 2002 for the under-23 men’s four. It prompted his move from Canterbury University to continue his studies at Waikato University and live at Karapiro, the headquarters for Rowing NZ’s elite squad. He was an unexpected selection for the Athens Olympics in 2004, displacing Rob Hellstrom in the men’s coxless pair. Bridgewater and veteran Nathan Twaddle had been rowing together just three months when they missed out on a bronze medal by 0.84 seconds.
“It was tough at the time, but once we got over the initial disappointment we realised how far we’d come. We didn’t get a medal, but we knew we were fast and competitive and that helped motivate us to win gold and become the world champions at Gifu the following year.”
In 2006, the pair beat the All Blacks to win the coveted team of the year trophy at the Halberg Awards.
After three years with coach John Robinson, whose philosophy was “miles makes champions”, the pair were taken up by head coach Dick Tonks in March. “He’s not a great one for huge pre-race talks or big debriefs, and he definitely doesn’t waffle or say unnecessary things, so what he does say you certainly listen to. We realised we had to change something relatively big to make the step up.
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