Pete Reed

Pete Reed was born in the Pacific Northwest of the USA but was still a baby when his family moved to the west of England. As a teenager he excelled at rugby and basketball but especially American Football where he played for the British national junior team. At the age of 18 he joined the Royal Navy where his talent for rowing was discovered when he set a service record on the ergometer at his first attempt. Reed first sat in a boat in 2002 whilst studying to become a naval engineer at the University of the West of England and twelve months later competed at the World under 23 Championships. He went to Oxford in 2004 and was a two time rowing Blue (2004 and 2005). He missed selection for the 2004 Olympics but, as an established member of the national coxless four, helped his crew to dominate the 2005 and 2006 seasons and win the World Championship and World Cup titles in both years. After a poor performance at the 2007 World Championships where they failed to win a medal the quartet returned to form at the Beijing Olympics where they outsprinted the Australian crew to claim the gold medal.

Reed switched to coxless pairs in 2009 and teamed up with Andrew Triggs Hodge and the pair won world championship silver medals in the three years between 2009-11, behind the strong new Zealand pair of Eric Murray and Hamish Bond on each occasion. Reed reverted to coxless fours in 2012 and after two World Cup race wins, won his second Olympic gold medal. Since 2013 Reed has been rowing with the British eights and won his third world title before going on to add two more in 2014 and 2015. He also won bronze and silver respectively in the eights at the European Championships in those same two years, and in 2016 he won his third Olympic gold. Reed’s lung capacity was measured in tests conducted at the English Institute of Sport to be over 11.5 litres – the highest ever recorded for a sportsman.