Welsh rowers help to secure bronze success at Olympics

Two welsh athletes have taken home bronze after finishing third in the men's eight rowing at the Tokyo Olympics.

Josh Bugajski and Oliver Wynne-Griffith finished behind New Zealand and Germany.

In a thrilling race, New Zealand proved to be the class of the field, taking gold, while Team GB and Germany battled it out behind them for the silver.

It was the Germans who edged it by just 0.2 seconds, leaving the GB crew agonisingly close to a second silver of the Games

With seven of the eight appearing in their first Games, joining Rio 2016 men's four gold medallist Sbihi, it was a creditable way to close out the regatta.

They joined the men’s quad in bringing back a medal from these Games, while the young squad will look ahead to Paris in 2024.

Earlier in the week, Team GB won a men’s quadruple sculls medal for the first time in Olympic history after coming home for silver for the first rowing medal of Tokyo 2020.

Former Welsh student Tom Barras was among the quad as they went on to take home silver.

Oliver Wynne-Griffith, 27, said: “Overall we’re very proud of the performance. We’ve had a pretty up and down week, we had some honest conversations throughout the week about our processes and getting back to our best.

“We’ve got a medal, it’s not the colour we wanted but there have been a lot of fourth places on the team, a lot of near misses and it’s good to be on the right side of one.

“I’m really proud of the guys, really proud of the row. We did everything we could to put the best race we possibly could on the day out there.

“Fair play to Germany and fair play to New Zealand for putting two really, really fast races together.”

The men’s eight was led by Mohamed Sbihi, who had been the flag bearer for Team GB at the opening ceremony.

The young crew was made up of Josh Bugajski, Jacob Dawson, Tom George, Sbihi, Charles Elwes, Oliver Wynne-Griffith, James Rudkin, Tom Ford and Henry Fieldman.