Wells ready to make Beijing experience count at London 2012
Nov 28 2008 The Journal
Clinching a medal in Beijing has only spurred rower Matt Wells to strive for an even better result in London in four years’ time, as he tells Stuart Rayner
The 29-year-old claimed a bronze at Qingdao in August after a dramatic finish to the men’s double sculls final. Wells and his partner, Durham University graduate Steve Rowbotham, spent the whole race chasing front-runners Australia. Not only did they finish 1min 33sec behind the eventual winners, the British pair were pushed into third by an impressive late rally from the Estonian crew, who claimed silver by 0.05secs.
Having returned from the two previous Olympics empty-handed put Wells’ disappointment into perspective, however.
“Initially I was quite disappointed not to have won,” he admits. “We strongly believed we could. The fact we were in the silver medal position for the entirety of the race, we expected to almost have that then go for the gold.
“If you’d told me we’d get bronze before the Olympic final, I’d have said ‘I’ll take that no problem’ but when it actually happened it was different. I’m never happy.
“You could never turn down the chance of an Olympic medal though. It’s amazing when you think about it.
“Even though it’s just bronze it does feel quite big to me because of what we had to do this year. We really had to push through some hard times and work very closely together to do that.”
Rowing is a notoriously demanding sport but the lure of a home Olympics has persuaded Wells not to opt for early retirement just yet.
“In a normal week we train for six-and-a-half days and every third weekend we get a Sunday off, so you get the picture,” he explains. “We can’t really do anything else.
“The gap between the absolute optimum where we can train and the edge is so fine we often get it wrong. With all the sports science backing we have got it’s still down to how you feel on the day. That often takes a little bit of practice, you tend to push it so hard.
“I don’t think I would have stayed on if 2012 hadn’t been in London. To have a home Olympics, I’m just so excited about it. I love making sure people are excited about what I’m doing.”
The demands of his sport forced Bradford-born Wells to uproot from Hexham ten years ago and move to Putney to be closer to the British team’s purpose-built facility in Caversham, Reading. He lives with his fianceé, Georgie Lewis, a PA in the City. The pair have been together since 2000 and are due to marry next September.
Wells was a talented young runner, a county champion at 800m, 1500m and 3000m and winner of the regional league cross-country title. But he wanted to try other sports and in 1993 learned to row at Hexham’s Queen Elizabeth High School.
In 1997 he won a gold medal at the World Rowing Junior Championships in the men’s double scull and bronze, then gold, at successive World
Under-23 Championships as a single sculler.
In 2006, their first year together, Wells and Somerset-born Rowbotham won Britain’s first Olympic-class sculling medal for more than 20 years at the 2006 World Championships. In the 2007 World Cup Series, he won silver and gold in the double and was fourth at the World Championships in Munich. In the 2008 World Cup Series he won gold and silver at the first and second regattas but a broken wrist for Rowbotham forced him to sit out the third. Wells also had injury problems in the run-up to China, suffering three back injuries in the winter of 2007-08.
He partnered Matthew Langridge at the Athens Olympics, where the pair missed the final by 0.02secs but won the B Final. He was ninth in the single scull at Sydney in 2000.
