MUMBLES: Pritchard defends European title as Welsh golden weekend continues

Ben Pritchard is European champion again.

The Mumbles para-rower successfully defended his PR1 men’s single sculls title at the European Rowing Championships on Lago di Varese in northern Italy on Sunday, winning the A final in nine minutes 7.88 seconds.

It keeps intact a remarkable run for the 34-year-old, who now holds the European, world and Paralympic titles at the same time.

Victory came on the same stretch of water where Pritchard took European silver in 2021, three years into a rowing career that began in a hospital gym.

The City of Swansea Rowing Club sculler was paralysed from the waist down in a cycling crash in September 2016, took up indoor rowing during rehabilitation at Stoke Mandeville, and joined the British para development squad the following year.

The rivals in Varese were familiar ones. Italy’s Giacomo Perini and Ukraine’s two-time Paralympic champion Roman Polianskyi, a rower Pritchard counts as a good friend, were the men he beat to gold in Paris two years ago.

Pritchard had made a statement of intent in the heats, winning in 8:57.06 to go straight through to the medal race, 12 seconds clear of France’s Alexis Sanchez.

The final looked the tougher assignment. Perini posted a quicker heat time than Pritchard on his home water, while Polianskyi was racing his first international regatta of the season.

Great Britain’s Lauren Henry also took gold in Varese, in the women’s single sculls.

Last year’s European title, won in Plovdiv, was the first ever taken by a British PR1 sculler, and Pritchard marked it by setting the world best time twice in three days, first 8:47.88 in his heat and then 8:40.38 in the final.

He added the world title in Shanghai in September, completing what he had called the “top trump card” of major honours.

The distance travelled is best measured against the piece we ran as he set off for the 2023 World Championships in Belgrade, a bronze medallist then, hoping to change the colour of his medal. He has since won every title in the sport.

This season he has broken his own Concept2 indoor world record and won World Rowing Cup III in Lucerne by 15 seconds.

The recognition has followed. He was named BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year in December, and World Rowing’s Para Crew of the Year in March, signing the International Olympic Committee’s athletes wall at the ceremony.

Pritchard has spoken about refusing to coast in the season after a Paralympics, saying he felt it important to move the marker so the sport does not stagnate before Los Angeles in 2028.

Attention now turns to the World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam at the end of August, where he defends the world title he won in Shanghai.

It caps a strong weekend for Welsh sport, with Carmarthen’s Emma Finucane winning a third Commonwealth gold at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow.