Paralympic champion Ed Fuller leaps into Olympic unknown

Among the many Olympic, world and European champions competing at 2026 World Rowing Cup I in Seville was one Paralympic champion – but not in a para-rowing boat class.

Great Britain’s Ed Fuller won the PR3 mixed coxed four at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, and has also picked up three world titles in that boat class (plus one in the PR3 men’s pairs), three European titles, and three World Rowing Cup wins along the way.

But in Seville, Fuller raced the men’s double sculls with Matt Long in a British ‘development boat’, reaching the semifinals and ultimately finishing 12th overall. For the upcoming 2026 European Rowing Championships, Fuller will race with James Gare, thus making his championship debut in an Olympic boat class.

Exploring new possibilities

Fuller is still PR3 classified. He had several internal joint bleeds when he was younger, resulting in permanent impairment to his right leg.

“I can’t stand for long periods of time, I can’t walk long distances. That challenge is still there on a race day of minimising how I work around that,” Fuller explains. “Also because of my ankle I have slight ankle wastage and calf wastage, so I’m slightly imbalanced in that way.

“I try to not think about it too much. It’s there obviously, but I still want to be competitive and pushing myself with the people we were racing today. I like to put it to the back of my mind.”

His decision to trial for the British senior team came after a stellar introduction to elite rowing when he joined the para-squad back in 2022.

“We had an amazing cycle last cycle,” he says. “I came into a very successful boat class with some very successful people who were guiding me through how to win in that boat class, and that was very cool as a 19-year-old.

“Those three years were amazing, basically going to those places knowing you were going to come out with a medal and it’s probably going to be a gold one, and setting world best times. Setting a new world best time each year was really cool, and obviously culminating with the gold medal in Paris was almost like a full stop on that chapter.”

But at the same time, Fuller was watching the success of contemporaries he used to race against as a junior, and thinking maybe he could match them.

“I thought to myself, 10 years down the line, if I hadn’t given it a go I might regret it. That was my main motivation really, seeing how I would stack up and pushing myself to be better and improve, that extra 1 or 2 per cent of motivation to try and push my physiology on and my technique on,” he says.

Laying down new bricks

He raced some of the GB trials with Long last season, and this season has participated in seat racing and testing for real – a process Fuller describes as “really rewarding”.

“I think I’ve learned quite a lot about myself, trying to maximise my own physiology and trying to produce really high-quality performances,” he explains. “It’s very different in the para four where we’d race to 1500 and put a lid on it from there, whereas in this it’s much more foot hard down and then you’re working with finer margins.

“Definitely extracting the most out of myself is what I’ve learned the most in the last 18 months or so. Building up myself psychologically and physically as an athlete – I’m 23 years old, I’m hopefully going to be doing this for a few more years at least. So laying bricks down, building foundations up is pretty satisfying.”

However, Fuller is keeping an open mind on his next steps in rowing. “I finish university this year, so next year will be quite a pivotal season of whether I can make another step on and try and push to be in these sorts of events more often. My impairment is still there, so to keep both doors open would be a wise thing to do,” he adds.

Fuller’s career racing for Reading University has also taken off this year, with a string of wins in races in the UK, and he credits the squad and its coaches for the support he has had in the para-squad and now this season in the senior team.

One blade to two

This season has also taught Fuller more about racing small boats, after spending the bulk of the last three years in a coxed four.

“I sculled as a kid a lot, so I think if I had to lean one way it would probably be sculling because it’s what I first learned to do, and it feels more natural doing, but I did really enjoy sweeping as well,” he says, of the difference between the two disciplines.

Fuller adds that he enjoys “the lightness and the raciness of a smaller boat class” as well as the closeness of racing, which the men’s double sculls field currently has. He and Long did not set expectations for their performance in Seville, but were pleased with how things turned out.

“To be in the A/B semifinal and know we would at least be in the B-final is a really cool thing. We tried to maximise what we could in that semifinal by being aggressive and front-loading; it didn’t quite pay off, but realistically we might have been in the B-final either way,” he admits.

Fuller says he would love to see other para-athletes try and make the crossover, although he notes that there is a wide range of impairments and not every athlete would want or necessarily be able to do so.

“It’s had a lot of unknowns, the process. But I’m really grateful for all the support from the team here that I’ve had, and it’s been a really welcoming environment of wanting to push me forward and see the performances that I could do,” he says.

It will be fascinating to see where his journey takes him next.