Rower Bolding hoping to finally reach Olympic Games

Morgan Bolding first picked up an oar at the Castle Dore Rowing Club in Cornwall

Morgan Bolding is hoping 2024 will finally be his year.

The Team GB rower has had his fair share of bad luck, but is hoping he can finally make an Olympic Games after Covid-19 helped dash his hopes four years ago.

The 29-year-old, who grew up in Cornwall and learned to row on the River Fowey, had been picked for the men's eight at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo before they were postponed because of the global pandemic.

But a year later, after spending time training on his own in his living room during lockdown, illness meant he missed out on selection for the rearranged Games 12 months later.

"I was a little bit unwell for the important testing period and I missed the part I needed to do and lost my opportunity to retain my seat," he tells BBC South West.

"That was tough, but to be honest it was something I was prepared for and it really has driven me more this year because I take things as they come.

"It's almost made me feel a lot more comfortable in the knowledge, even now when things are going well, that I might not end up going, but I will do everything I can to get there."

Bolding is hopeful he can make the Paris games this summer. He is part of the men's eight that has lost just one race over the past few years and won the European Championships last month.

"We have had a very good run into the last few years," he says.

"Every step of the Olympiad is always teeing up for the Olympics, it feels like an achievement really because you've got that one goal at the end of the Olympiad looming over you and every step so far has gone really well.

"We've lost one race over the last few years and we've probably learnt from that as much as we would learn from the ones we won.

"We're feeling good, we're going well, I think it's just about not losing our heads, and just because it's an Olympic year trying to treat it the same as any other year, but just with that change at the end of the year."

Great Britain's men's eight have won World Cup and European Championship gold medals this year

Bolding is also keen to give something back to the people that have helped him through what has been at times a difficult life.

He was taken into care when he was six and he and his brother were brought up by their grandparents in Cornwall. It was their influence that led him to first pick up an oar at Castle Dore Rowing Club.

"I think they were instrumental in giving me the opportunities that I probably wasn't going to have in life otherwise," says Bolding of his grandparents.

"They introduced me to so many sports and I settled on rowing not because I was good at it, but because it was quite fun splashing around on the river.

"That was an incredible outlet for me in terms of something to channel all of that stuff I've been through as a kid."

He was also helped by those at Castle Dore, such as the late Alastair Barr, who taught him to row and helped fuel his ambition to make the Olympics.

"As a younger rower I didn't show huge amount of promise, I was quite skinny, I wasn't exactly strong, and I had a long path ahead of me to get to the point where I was even physical enough to be able to compete for seats," Bolding says.

"So a lot of my success I actually attribute to the people who would support me, even if my performances or my ability on face value wasn't there, because my drive was, my ambition was, and they wanted to support me even if I wasn't the most promising young athlete."

Now Bolding is hopeful there will be no last-minute hiccups and that he can finally realise his ambition and compete at an Olympic Games.