Bridgewater was born in 1983 in
Wellington, New Zealand. He rowed for the Avon club based in Christchurch, and won several titles at
New Zealand Rowing Championships, beginning in 2002. Bridgewater and Twaddle finished fourth in the pairs final at the
Athens Olympics. They won a gold medal at the
World Rowing Championships in
Gifu Prefecture,
Japan, in 2005, in the
Magic 45 minutes where four New Zealand crews won gold medals. The pair finished second in the 2006 and 2007 World Rowing Championships. In 2008, following the Beijing Olympics, Bridgewater matriculated at
Oriel College, Oxford, where he was part of the winning crew in the 155th
University Boat Race on 29 March 2009, rowing at seven. While at Oxford, Bridgewater stroked the
Oriel College 1st Eight in
Summer Eights, bumping Balliol College to finish 3rd on the river. In the
2009 New Year Honours, Bridgewater was appointed a
Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to rowing. Later that year he graduated from the
University of Oxford Saïd Business School with an MBA. He worked for
Morgan Stanley in Singapore, but returned to New Zealand in June 2014 to prepare for the 2016 Olympics. He competed in the
quadruple sculls at Rio with
Nathan Flannery,
John Storey, and
Jade Uru, and the team came tenth. ==Private life==