Following in the footsteps of Olympic champions is never an easy task, but it is the challenge a completely new men’s eight crew must rise to at the 2025 World Rowing Championships.
While pressure is customary for British boats, Matt Aldridge prefers to view the refresh of crew as an opportunity to write their own story.
Aldridge has made the transition from the coxless four ahead of the World Championships, having won bronze for Team GB at Paris 2024, and will now bring his medal-winning expertise to an eight that features none of last summer’s Olympic champions.
“We're a brand new eight compared to the eight that raced in Paris last year. This is most of [the crew’s] first international senior season,” said Aldridge.
“We've got big shoes to fill with a very strong eight that came before us, but we're definitely trying to put our own mark on it.
“There's always pressure going into a World Championships. Everyone's feeling that same sort of pressure to go out and perform.
“But it's less that we need to do what they did or we need to emulate them. It's more, OK, let's use this first year of the Olympic cycle to see where we are, to see where we stack up against some of the other nations.
“I'm the only returning Paris Olympian that's in the boat so I'm with eight other new guys. We don't have any pressure.
“We're racing people that have been at Paris, won medals at Paris. It's just, let's see how fast we can go.”
The 29-year-old is the oldest in the men’s eight travelling to Shanghai for the World Championships, marking a difference from his experience in the previous cycle.
And while he has been able to impart his knowledge of racing at the highest level, the transition from the coxless four has also left Aldridge needing to get to grips with a different style.
“In the last cycle, I was one of the younger guys. Now all of a sudden, I'm one of the oldest members in the whole team, not just in the men's eight,” he reflected.
“It's really good. I'm really enjoying being that experienced head, as it were. I've been there, I've done a lot of it before. I can run the guys through what to expect.
“It's been very difficult, especially the first few months of this project. I basically spent all of my international career in a coxless four, so it's a bit slower.
“It's a little bit more technical when you move into the men's eight and it's like a drag race. It's a lot of power very quickly and the last person to slow down usually wins.
“It's taken me a while to get used to changing my mentality of how to race and how to approach racing.
“I'm enjoying it being something new and fresh. We all rely on each other and bring our individual elements and expertise into the boat. That's building into something really exciting.”
The importance of a strong team bond is not lost on Aldridge who knows all too well about what it means to rely on his crewmates.
The four-time European champion got married in August 2025 and had all three of the members of his World Championship-winning coxless four boat in his wedding party.
“The [World Championship title in 2023] was a combination of a really, really strong season and the five of us, including Christian, our coach, being a really tight unit,” explained Aldridge.
“Fred [Davidson] and Dave [Ambler] were my best men at my wedding and Ollie [Wilkes] was one of the groomsmen.
“We formed a really close group and that helped us have a really strong season, push through and become world champions at the end. It was one of those ones where we know we're fast enough to win this, we just need to go out and do what we can.
“We're in a similar position with the eight. We've not known each other for as long, so we're not quite as tight yet, but we are still really good friends.
“We know we're fast enough to get a very good result out of this, it's just making sure we can deliver that.”
The British men’s eight boat have already shown their potential having claimed European Championship gold in Plovdiv in June, pipping the Dutch to the title by 0.24 seconds.
Travel to Shanghai will prove a different test altogether for a boat still building in experience, but despite being early on their journey, Aldridge is unequivocal about their aims.
“The objective success is coming away with a bit of metal around your neck. Our ultimate aim is to win and become world champions,” he asserted.
“We are capable of that, but on paper we are the weakest boat in the field.
“We're racing the Dutch, who are majority Paris 2024 silver medallists and the Germans, who have an incredibly strong history of making an eight go very quickly and have multiple Olympians in their boat.
“As well as the US, who are always incredibly fast and the Australians, who have beaten us this season.
“On paper, we are the least experienced. So if we go out and we do the best we can, we commit our perfect race, we 100% commit to it, we finish and we're like, ‘I couldn't have got any more out of that.’ I think that is a success.”
Sportsbeat 2025