European Rowing Championship silver medal is a motivation for world gold for GB’s Tom George and Ollie Wynne-Griffith

Tom George and Ollie Wynne-Griffith intend to use the disappointment of a silver medal at the European Rowing Championships as motivation for world glory.

The Cambridge University Boat Club duo were representing Great Britain in the final of the men’s coxless pair.

Romania’s Marius Cozmiuc and Sergiu Bejan got a jump on their rivals in the first 300m, and it was something that could not be reeled in at Munich’s Olympic Regatta Centre.

It meant the GB crew had to settle for silver, 2.24sec behind the gold medal winners.

“It’s not really good enough, if I’m honest, with the standard we’ve set for ourselves,” George told Matthew Pinsent on BBC TV.

“We know we’re faster than that. We want to put more out there, to be honest. I think we probably had a bit more in the tank that we maybe didn’t use.

“We didn’t get our race plan quite right, didn’t settle into the rhythm we wanted.

“A silver medal is obviously still great, second in the European Championships is amazing, but, obviously, we were hoping for a bit more and I think we’ve got a couple of weeks now to go away and work hard before the world championships.”

It is a relatively quick turnaround to the 2022 World Rowing Championships in Racice in the Czech Republic, which are from September 18 to 25.

Wynne-Griffith hopes the silver medal can spur on their next block of training.

“It’s disappointing, but at the same time if that’s a lesson that we have to learn to go better in six weeks’ time then so be it,” he said.

“You have to just take something from the lessons that you learn from the races that you lose, [and they] generally are harder ones but more valuable ones to learn.

“If we learn something from that when the racing starts in six weeks, that’s the path we have to take.

“Sometimes you have to take the bypass, but obviously the goal is six weeks’ time and that’s where our focus is at from this point onwards.”