Tom George and Ollie Wynne-Griffith book place in semi-finals of men’s pair at Olympic Games in Paris

Cambridge University Boat Club alumni Tom George and Ollie Wynne-Griffith negotiated a safe passage through to tomorrow’s semi-finals in the men’s pair at the Olympic Games.

The duo, who studied at Peterhouse and are friends from their school days, were triumphant in their heat on Sunday.

George said: “I think we executed our plan pretty well. We knew people would jump out – it’s the Olympics after all, but we stayed calm.

“We can always be better and I think that’s important and actually a good thing, you don’t want to have the perfect race in the heat and think ‘where do we go from here’ and we earnt the right to relax a little bit in that last 500m and keep it long and loose and take it to the line.”

Wynne-Griffith added: “I think if you’ve got to the line first in your heat at the Olympics Games there’s got to be a certain element of confidence.

“We could be sharper out of the blocks, we want to be dominant in every part of our race and we probably didn’t do that today so we can work on that.

“Little bits in the last 500m we didn’t have to do today, but it’s nice to have things to work on.”