Mahe Drysdale
Alexander Mahe Owens Drysdale (born 19 November 1978) is a New Zealand rower. Drysdale is the current Olympic champion and five-time World champion in the single sculls. The name Mahe comes from the largest island in the Seychelles.
Born in Australia to New Zealand parents, Drysdale attended Tauranga Boys' College in Tauranga, New Zealand, then the University of Auckland. He began rowing at university at the age of 18. He gave up rowing to concentrate on his studies, but began rowing again after watching fellow New Zealander Rob Waddell win gold at the 2000 Olympic Games.
Drysdale is a member of the West End Rowing Club in Avondale, Auckland, New Zealand, and Tideway Scullers School, London.
Drysdale began competing at World Cup level in 2002, in the New Zealand coxless four. After the 2004 Olympic Games, in which his New Zealand crew finished fifth in the final, Drysdale switched to the single scull, winning the 2005 World Championships at Gifu, Japan, despite having broken two vertebrae in a crash with a water skier earlier in the year.
He successfully defended his title in 2006 at Dorney Lake, Eton, England, in 2007 at Munich, Germany, and again in 2009 in Poznan, Poland, holding off Britain's Alan Campbell and Czech Republic's Ondrej Synek. At the 2009 World Rowing Championships he also beat his own World Record in the single and reduced it to 6:33.35.
At the 2012 Summer Olympics Drysdale won the gold medal in the men's single sculls, despite throwing up the morning of race day due to nervousness. He has since been dethroned, and had to settle with silver in the world championships leading up to the 2016 Olympics, each time bested by the Czech Ondrej Synek, who won the WC in 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics, Drysdale successfully defended his Olympic men's single sculls title, taking the gold medal over Croatia's Damir Martin. The race was decided by a photo finish, with Drysdale edging out Martin by half a bow ball. In November 2016, Drysdale announced that he would take a break from rowing in 2017. He returned to the New Zealand squad at the end of 2017 with a view of competing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Drysdale won the 2006 Sportsman of the Year award and took out the supreme Halberg award.[19] He was again voted Sportsman of the Year in 2007, 2009, 2012, and 2016, and is the only New Zealander to have won the award more than three times.