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.