Zoe McBride

Zoe McBride started rowing at Kavanagh College and Otago Rowing Club in 2009.

She represented New Zealand for the first time at the 2012 World Rowing Junior Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, where she picked up a bronze medal in the women’s quadruple sculls. Zoe shifted to Nelson Rowing Club and Central Rowing Performance Centre in 2014 and pursued a rowing career as a lightweight, a move that would prove successful. She linked up with Sophie Mackenzie and won gold in the lightweight women’s double at the 2014 World Rowing U23 Championships. Zoe repeated her U23 gold-medal performance a year later in 2015, this time with Jackie Kiddle. She was then asked to join the New Zealand elite team after the U23 worlds and became the elite world champion in the lightweight women’s single sculls. She repeated this exceptional performance a year later after narrowly missing out on Olympic selection. After Rio, Zoe and Jackie were back together in the lightweight double and enjoyed a successful international campaign, picking up a gold at World Rowing Cup III in Lucerne and backing that up with a silver at the 2017 World Rowing Championships in Sarasota, Florida.

Unable to build on their spectacular silver in 2017, a sixth place finish was a great result at the 2018 World Rowing Championships in an extremely slick field. The true character of Zoe and Jackie was shown, however, when they returned in the double in 2019 and were undefeated at the World Rowing Cups and then continued that winning streak all the way through the World Rowing Championships, where the duo also clocked a World Rowing Championships best time in the process.

Zoe is working towards a degree in psychology and marketing, and has a cat named Loki.