Beach sprints success beckons for Bales-Smith

Murray Bales-Smith has had a pretty tough few years, but 2025 looks like it might mark the turning point.

As previously reported by World Rowing early in 2024, Bales-Smith had a breakout year on the water in 2023, but in the same year had to cope both with his father passing away after a cancer diagnosis, and being stabbed in an assault in Pretoria.

By 2024 Bales-Smith was physically recovered, and was selected again to represent South Africa at the 2024 World Rowing Championships in the lightweight men’s single sculls.

“I finished world champs 2023 11th in the lightweight single and I felt I could just push a bit more, get some momentum going and push for an A-final. That was always the big goal, to make an A-final at world champs, especially in the lightweight single,” he explains.

But on arrival in Canada for the 2024 World Rowing Championships, Bales-Smith came down with pneumonia. After struggling through the heat and the repechage, he tried a steady training session, but knew he was not quite right.

“I went to the doctor and he said ‘if you carry on racing you’re going to really mess up your lungs’, so just for my future of rowing he really recommended that I pull out from the regatta. So that was a far trip from South Africa for two races. It’s all about the experience and learning. I was just unlucky.”

Bales-Smith says the 2024 World Rowing Championships was the end of his career in classic rowing.

“With the exit of lightweight rowing that future’s come to an end. I don’t see myself as someone who could transition to heavyweight, I’m a bit shorter. I have to be realistic there,” he says.

However, there was a light at the end of a tough 2023 and 2024 for the South African, because he discovered beach sprints. Now, at the 2025 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals in Antalya, Türkiye, Bales-Smith became the first South African to make the quarterfinals of any beach sprints event, after he beat African champion Omar Elkomaty in the knockouts.

“It’s my best result so far at a World Rowing event,” says Bales-Smith. “It’s epic, you see some names of athletes that are really up there in the flat water scene and they’ve come here.”

Indeed, he got further through the competition in Antalya than Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion Spencer Turrin, and fellow former lightweight Finlay Hamill, among others. And Bales-Smith is loving the new discipline.

“I’m really excited about this sport. The atmosphere’s pretty crazy and it’s very spectator-friendly. It’s quite amazing to be in this holding area just before you race, and running back into it with the crowds it’s really cool.

“It’s a mixture of my two passions, in terms of my hobbies it’s rowing and surfing. I feel like it’s the sport for me,” he adds. “There was something that drew me to this. It’s the rowing and surfing and the running and the excitement, and when they said it was going to be in Los Angeles, it’s like why not give it a shot.”

Although South Africa is perhaps better known for its surf beaches, there is a developing coastal community in Durban, East London and Cape Town, and Bales-Smith says there are enough places where it is possible to train for beach sprints.

“It would be nice to see more people taking it up. Hopefully after this weekend more people can see that in South Africa there’s a potential for the sport and results,” he says.

“You can see rowing’s getting some hype behind the sport, and I can see it being a really cool thing for the future of rowing.”