 After the 2004 Olympic Games, in which his New Zealand crew finished fifth in the final, Drysdale switched to the single scull, winning the 2005 World Championships at Gifu, Japan, despite having broken two vertebrae in a crash with a water skier earlier in the year.He successfully defended his title in 2006 at Dorney Lake, Eton, England, in 2007 at Munich, Germany, and again in 2009 in Poznań, Poland, holding off Britain's Alan Campbell and Czech Republic's Ondřej Synek.At the 2009 World Rowing Championships he also beat his own World Record in the single and reduced it to 6