GREAT BRITAIN's rowing contingent at Shunyi Lake in Beijing have become the most successful Olympic rowing squad since 1908.

Two gold, two silver and two bronze medals mean Great Britain top the Olympic rowing regatta.

And included in that success was bronze medallist Steve Rowbotham.

Steve is the son of a former Torquay Boys' Grammar School pupil and has family dotted all over South Devon and the South Hams – including one of his uncles who is Torbay police Superintendent Chris Singer.

Now the Olympics are out of the way, Rowbotham will be hot-footing it down to Salcombe in September to get married to fiancee Eleanor Rowntree.

Rowbotham lives near Bristol, where dad Chris is in business, but he has two uncles in South Devon and a grandma in Salcombe.

Chris ran the long-gone Scholl shoe shop on Torquay Harbourside before business took him away from the area.

Rowbotham – sculling in the heavyweight men's double sculls with Matt Wells, both of Leander – went in lane one in the final.

At 500 metres it was Australia leading the field with Slovenia second and Great Britain sat in third.

Going through halfway, it was still the Aussies ahead but by a length from Great Britain with Estonia and Slovenia in third and fourth.

The Aussies continued to lead by a length over Great Britain at 1,500m but the Brits were being chased hard by Estonia and New Zealand.

Australia won gold and it was a photo finish between Estonia and Team GB, but Estonia got the nod for silver.

Just 1.5 seconds divided the three medal crews at the finish and Britain only missed silver by five-hundredths of a second, but there no complaints from the heroic pair.

"We said before the race we'd never pass up an Olympic medal, so we have to be delighted with what we've done today," said Rowbotham.