New faces and new champions take centre stage in Shanghai

The 2025 World Rowing Championships in Shanghai was the climax to the first year of the new Olympic and Paralympic cycle, which, for the first time since 2016, will be a standard four years long.

And with a whole host of new faces hitting the international racing scene this year, many first-time world champions were crowned. In total, 52 athletes won their first gold medals in Shanghai – some on their debuts, and some after multiple senior World Rowing Championships.

To put that into context, there were 72 individual gold medals up for grabs across the 23 events, and only 18 people managed to add to a previous win (Simona Radis and Maria Magdalena Rusu picking up two golds).

The regatta started with the lightweight double sculls, and all four Chinese athletes securing gold were first-time champions. The lightweight single sculls also went to first-time world champions, albeit at either end of their careers: Felipe Kluver of Uruguay is 25, and won the World Rowing Under 23 Championships just two years ago, while Michelle Sechser of the USA turns 39 in a few weeks and competed in her first World Rowing Championships in 2012.

“It took me a lot of years to get very good at this,” jokes Sechser. She tried for the openweight squad this year, but missed out and pivoted to the lightweight single.

“It didn’t even feel like any sort of downgrade, I was really excited. I love this boat class, it’s so nice. For better or worse, you’re your whole crew. It was a really fun journey since that selection camp to get to hop in the single and have this dream that I could be on the top step of the podium at a world championship,” she adds.

“And singing the national anthem as they raised the US flag, it’s cheesy but it really meant a lot.”

Another athlete who has tried many times to win a world gold medal is the Netherlands’ Roos de Jong. De Jong has won three World Rowing Championship silver medals and a bronze, and been on the wrong side of several very close races recently.

“It was really good to have it the other way around, finally,” de Jong says. “This year I really felt like I need to win, because I don’t know if otherwise I can continue. After a while you have to do it, otherwise you don’t believe in yourself anymore. It sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s really how I felt.

“I really pushed it away and I was just like I’m going to be angry instead of scared – although I have been scared also a lot this year.”

Building on a legacy

Other athletes rocked up for the first time at their senior World Rowing Championships and went home with a gold medal, some carrying significant legacy in their boat class.

New Zealand’s Oliver Welch and Benjamin Taylor picked up gold in the men’s pair, Welch adding the senior title to the under 23 gold he won in 2024.

“Being in the pair last year and the pair this year, there’s definitely some similarities but this is another level, so stepping up and winning a senior world champs is pretty unreal,” he says.

Taylor says the legacy of the ‘Kiwi pair’ from years past – particularly Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, who went unbeaten for eight years, winning seven world titles – was on their minds. 2019 champion Tom Murray was involved in their preparation.

“We caught up with Eric not long ago and he sent us a message today,” Taylor says. “It’s pretty awesome to hear their names in the commentary and to be able to rub shoulders with guys like that is pretty exceptional. It’s definitely an honour to be in the New Zealand pair, that’s for sure.”

Similarly, the British men’s four brings a weight of history, but with three of the crew making their senior World Rowing Championship debuts in Shanghai, the new champions saw their project as a chance for something new.

“We were aware of the legacy of the four, but just intent on writing our own story this year,” says two-seat James Robson.

“It was just about trying to get better each session. I think we did that really well, managed to keep it very internal through the races, and just really happy to cross the line first,” Robson adds.

The start of something new

Other boats are starting to write their own legacies with their 2025 titles. Azja Czajkowski joined the USA national squad after graduating in 2023, and although she raced at the Olympic Games last year, she says she knows she was not ready last summer to achieve the sort of performance that the USA women’s four put out in Shanghai.

“Our first year coming into the training centre felt rushed, and in my experience at least, I knew I wasn’t close to being the best athlete that I could be yet. I think just having a little bit more time and a fresh new cycle, and this awesome group of people that we’ve been working with for a couple of years now, it feels really special,” Czajkowski says.

The last races of the regatta added more first-time champions – in fact, at least one rower in every race on Sunday, including new women’s single sculls champion Fiona Murtagh of Ireland, who grabbed her title in a photofinish by 0.03 seconds.

“I’m really proud of how I’ve grown in the last year,” says Murtagh, who got into the single after a disappointing Olympics.

“I’m backed by a really incredible team: my teammates have been amazing, my coaches have been so good and the support staff, and my family and everyone close to me. It takes a village, it really does.

“There’s been a quiet confidence all week in myself. I knew it was going to be really hard, but I knew if I stuck to my plan of things that it would go in my favour. I knew it would come down to inches, and it was the scruff of a bowball. To see my name first on the screen was such a shock,” she adds.

The Shanghai results will now serve as motivation for winners and those who just missed out alike, to get back to training and prepare for the 2026 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam – let’s see how many crews can defend their titles on the Bosbaan next August.