Harry Fitzpatrick - World Championships

The World Rowing Championships were held on the Bosbaan, Amsterdam at the end of August. With eyes on Olympic qualification at World Champs next year, there are a lot of countries testing crews to see what performances stick.

WERC was represented by Harry Fitzpatrick (3 seat in photo and SPC old boy) who raced in the Men’s Four, and Men’s Eight, finishing 6th and 8th respectively.

Harry Molloy (another SPC old boy, and Lead Women’s Coach at WERC) also attended the Championships coxing the Women’s 8+. This crew finished 6th in the standings.

Here is a reflection from Harry Fitzpatrick on the campaign:

I had the privilege of competing at the 2026 Rowing World Championships in both the men’s 4- and 8. The campaign was a lot of fun and it was great to row alongside a such an awesome group of guys. With it being my first senior World Championships, I learned a lot and gained a lot of new experiences that I will look to take forward into this next season ahead.

After the World Cup Campaign we re-trialed the crew at the end of June in our Final Confirmation Trial. At the conclusion of the trial, Matt McDonald, Ollie Maclean, Fred Vavasour and myself were selected in the crew. It was great to have Matt and Ollie in the boat as they brought a wealth of experience. With both of them having been in the NZ Men’s 4- that earned a Silver medal in the Paris Olympics it was great for younger athletes like Fred and myself to be able to learn from their past experiences.They were really great at teaching and explaining what they felt in the boat and how they thought we could improve. They always encouraged Fred and I to speak up about what we thought as well, making it a really great crew environment.

Competing in both the 4 and the 8 was a really exciting challenge that I was so grateful to be a part of. Racing in more than one event is something that I haven’t done at a pinnacle event since Nationals 2021. I was nervous about how it would be to have more racing throughout the week but I was also excited to have a greater opportunity to compete at the highest level. We trained the 8 a couple of times each week and everyone really bought into it. We all really enjoyed working on this project together and tried to make the most of every opportunity we had in the boat. In the 4- we found that we were able to learn a lot of good things from the 8 that we could then take back into 4- and help us improve.

I am really excited to continue building on these experiences next season in the lead up to the Olympic qualifiers in August 2027.