The 33-year-old from Mumbles, near Swansea in south Wales, has been selected as the BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year for 2025.
The 2024 Paralympic champion completed a full set of major titles in 2025, adding both the European and world crowns to his name to achieve a notable hat-trick of gold medals.
Pritchard comes from a sporting family. His father was a respected judoka and rugby player, while his mother played netball for the Welsh police force. His early sporting love was sailing, joining Mumbles Yacht Club and going on to represent Wales and Great Britain in varying boat classes in his youth. But, inspired by one of his teachers, Pritchard took up cycling and triathlon and it seemed that was where his sporting career would lie.
In 2016, however, his life changed forever following a cycling crash that left him paralysed from the ribcage down. Pritchard’s recovery began at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where he was introduced to adaptive sport – and to rowing, first as a way to help with his rehabilitation but then taking up the sport seriously.
He made his GB Rowing Team international debut in the PR1 men’s single sculls at the 2019 World Championships and has gone from strength to strength, culminating in the 2024 Paralympic title and now winning gold at the 2025 European Rowing Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in May and at the World Rowing Championships in Shanghai in September.
On being named BBC Cymru Wales Sports Personality of the Year 2025, Ben Pritchard said: “I’m just looking at some of the legends who have come before me. This means everything to me – to be recognised among sporting heroes and icons my family have talked about for generations is amazing.
“It’s recognition for all the hard work that’s gone in over the years. Nine years ago I was lying in a hospital bed, just aiming to get to a Paralympics and aiming to live my life again. And here I am, winning the biggest award in Welsh sport. It’s amazing.”
Pritchard’s sights are now firmly set on the Los Angeles 2028 Games where he will aim to defend his title and become a two-time Paralympic champion.
Ben Pritchard was selected for the BBC Cymru Wales award by an expert panel chaired by Paralympic great and Sport Wales chair Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, who was joined by former Wales footballer and netball player Nia Jones, Sport Wales’ Owen Lewis, Cardiff Metropolitan University’s dean of Sport and Health Sciences Professor Katie Thirlaway, and former BBC Wales football correspondent Rob Phillips.
Baroness Grey-Thompson said: “It was a really tough decision. Wales has again shown that it is able to produce really talented athletes across a wide range of sport.
“Ben has had a phenomenal year after winning in Paris, backing that up with a world record at the Europeans. It’s a big step up from bronze in 2022 at the Europeans and worlds. It was great to have a panel with a wide range of expertise to look at all the contenders.”
A close second to Pritchard in the panel’s deliberations was jockey Sean Bowen. The 28-year-old from Pembrokeshire started 2025 by passing the 1,000 winner milestone. Then in April he became only the third Welsh rider to be crowned Champion Jockey and the first since Dick Francis in 1954.
Other athletes who were highly commended during the panel’s deliberations included sprinter Jeremiah Azu, cyclists Anna Morris and Zoe Backstedt, Para-athletes Aled Sion Davies and Sabrina Fortune, snooker player Mark Williams, table tennis player Anna Hursey, rally driver Elfyn Evans, boxer Lauren Price and swimmer Matt Richards.
