Inspirational Pritchard targeting World Championship Rowing glory  

Up for grabs will also be seven qualification places in next year’s Paris Paralympics, an event Welshman Pritchard has targeted winning since a horrific cycling injury in 2016 left him in a wheelchair.  

At the time Pritchard was a talented Triathlete when tragedy stuck in a race with the now 31-year-old suffering spinal cord damage to the vertebrae leaving him paralysed from the rib cage down. 

This wasn’t the first time in his life Pritchard had overcome adversity. Having been born with a congenital cataract in his eye, surgery was needed to correct the issue at a young age but unlike the rest of the youngsters in his school, he was unable to compete in contact sport. This only spurred the Mumbles-born athlete to excel in cross-country running, swimming and then cycling before his switch to rowing. 

“I had a congenital cataract from birth, so I had surgery when I was five years old to replace the lens in my eye which meant that a lot of contact sports were out of bounds,” said Pritchard. 

 It meant that a lot of my PE lessons would be around athletics or sports that a lot of young kids wouldn’t entertain. 

“From a young age, I learnt to swim. My mum and dad instilled that in me as a safety mechanism. From there I loved going at five am to Swim Swansea, the National Pool and Penyrheol. 

“It got to a point where that got too much, and after speaking to a biology teacher called Mrs Smith it was suggested I try Triathlon because I was pretty good at cross-country, whereas I was average at swimming. 

“She said you could try and become average at all three, so I took that up and loved it. I still watch all the Triathlon and Cycling events now because it is a true passion of mine. I still have friends there that are still at the top end of the sport now.” 

It would be the escapism element of rowing that appealed to Pritchard after his accident despite initially not taking to the sport.  

“In 2016 I had my accident. My support network got me through, I wouldn’t be an elite athlete unless I had such a good network. When things are hard you really do lean on that,” explained Prichard. 

“It was no different when I had the injury. I leaned on them through the dark days. There are lots of them when you have had such bad news.  

“Everyone has their own challenges; no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors in people’s lives. Someone who is smiling at you could be having a really bad day mentally. 

“For me, it was always how I have lived my life in setting goals from an early age. You get taught to plan short, medium and long-term goals, when I had my accident that is how I treated it to get through the rehab period and it’s continued every year after that. 

“Rowing happened by a happy accident. I went to Stoke Mandeville Hospital where they have a link with British Rowing, they visited the hospital and that’s where it came from. 

“It’s well documented the reason I stayed in Rowing because unlike most Para sports with a Wheelchair, Rugby, Tennis, Basketball, etc. you are in a chair, whereas in Rowing I was in a boat and watched my chair disappear. For me, the drug that made me stay was the element of freedom. 

“On those cold hard days when it is raining, and your hands are freezing you really don’t want to be out there doing a session. That sense of freedom getting out of my chair is like no other. 

“Whilst the wheelchair is a great mobility aid and allows me to do so much in my life it is a very stark reminder of your disability from day-to-day. To have some time away from it is really powerful. Even now seven years on that is a massive driver for me.” 

Astute and knowledgeable about the nutritional side of training, Pritchard has combined his well-documented love for coffee cleverly with a nutritionist to maximise his performance. A factor he feels gives himself a cutting edge. 

“I’m a big coffee fan. It comes from when I was a triathlete. You look for legal ways to boost your performance and using caffeine is one way athletes will go about that,” enthused Pritchard. 

“I work with a nutritionist called Sean Aspinall and he’s based in Cardiff. We use caffeine a lot to fuel performance, and we’ve worked out the amount I need but it is very important to use at the right time. I don’t use it all season long and it’s important that I come off coffee before racing. 

“I used to get frustrated that you would have one espresso and have a buzz off it and then you would have one from somewhere else and you wouldn’t get the same feeling. 

Before a World Championships, I won’t have a lot of coffee because I want to make sure when I do have my caffeine hit it makes an impact. It definitely makes you more alert and helps with that readiness to go.  

“Every athlete has that fight-or-flight instinct within them, I guess what the caffeine does is it hyphens that up so when you’re at the start line you’re ready to go. For me, it’s all about having the fight in me to go and win. 

“People may not know but the milligrams of caffeine per tablespoon of coffee differ and vary depending on your coffee and choice.  

“I came across a company called True Start Coffee, when they started up, they focused on sports performance and could guarantee a certain amount of caffeine per tablespoon. You could then work out for your body weight the exact amount of caffeine you need to dose yourself accordingly. 

“That entered my curious data-driven brain into the World of coffee, then when I moved in 2018 to Ammanford I found Coaltown. 

“The guys there are like a family, Coaltown is like my bread-and-butter coffee and people make fun of me for how much I talk about it. If anyone in Wales is looking for a decent coffee head down because you will get one there.” 

Having claimed third place last year in Račice, Czech Republic, patriotic Welshman Pritchard feels despite having a challenging year of ups and downs he is ready to fly the flag for Team GB in the sport and emulate 2008 Paralympic and four-time World Champion Tom Aggar.  

“I got the bronze last year in one of the tightest races I have had. The guys are Paralympic champions and World champions, it was the closest I have been to Polianskyi [Roman] so that was pretty exciting,” explained Pritchard. 

“Someone said you’re in the jersey it’s not yours. You pass it on to the next generation and I like to think I’m doing that from Tom Aggar. He was the stalwart of British PR1 Rowing. I’ve taken on the jersey and have managed to get us back onto the podium at a World Championships, hopefully, now I can continue that streak. 

“This year has proved challenging having two surgeries, whilst I’ve also welcomed the arrival of a baby daughter. I’m not one for excuses but it has been difficult to get the training in. I was immobile for two weeks and then in a cast for six weeks, so I had to fit a season’s worth of training into twelve weeks, whilst also trying to raise a baby. 

“For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been out in Italy on an intense work camp. I now feel in a pretty good position to go out and put my stamp out there and come home with another medal, but It’s going to be tough.  

“My long-term plan is in Paris [Paralympics] to go sub nine minutes in the water. We got to 9.06 last season. So we need to lose six seconds.  

“Polianskyi currently has the record. Giacomo [Perini] the Italian set it last year then Roman broke it. There is a ding-dong of four of us going for it, we push each other on and it leads to an exciting race that’s for sure. 

“It will be really interesting because we have 23 entries here and there are seven qualification spots for Paris. Ten of the athletes though we have never seen before.  

“There is no race day tournament information anywhere so it will be interesting to see where they slot into that international field. I would like to think I’m in that top five pushing for a medal, but it is going to be anyone’s come this World Championship.”  

(Lead image: British Rowing/ Bennedict Tuffnell)