by Thor Nilsen, who has died aged 92, was an international rower, coach and administrator who helped maintain his sport’s status as an Olympic event during an era when it might otherwise have fallen by the wayside.
As development director of FISA, the World Rowing Federation (now World Rowing), from 1981 to 1997, Nilsen was instrumental in modernizing the sport, including by instituting year-round drug testing in 1981 (a rare in the sport at the time), and set up a new lightweight division in 1996.
He also worked to expand the global reach of rowing, particularly in Asia and South America, and perhaps his most notable achievement was in 1986 when he secured funding for a four-year rowing development program with his including launching a world cup regatta series, creating a universal training manual and launching starter kits to help set up new rowing clubs with minimal hassle and expense. By the time Nilsen stepped down in 2017, FISA had 150 affiliated countries, up from 62 when he started his work.
Apart from his administrative achievements, Nilsen has been a performance director and coaching consultant in various countries across Europe, helping rowers in Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Ireland to eight Olympic gold medals and more than 30 titles world championship. He was awarded the FISA distinguished service award in 2003 for his contribution to the sport.
Nilsen was born in Bærum, near Oslo, Norway, to Leif, a stone hauler and union organizer, and Karen (née Nygård), a domestic servant. He first started rowing during the second world war, as a teenager, on the west side of the nearby Oslofjord and, after becoming an apprentice at 14, he represented Norway at the European championships when he was 15.
After leaving the printing trade in 1949, he acquired a share in a company that sold swimming pools, but took a wrong turn when he tried to raise capital for the business by keeping a post office in the Oslo suburb of Stabekk. His gun was never loaded, but he spent nearly two years in prison as a result, returning to print upon his release before founding an advertising and marketing agency and then involved in various business ventures over the next two decades.
In the meantime he continued his part-time amateur rowing, becoming head coach at Bærum rowing club in 1958, but retired from his rowing career after crashing during an Olympic qualification regatta in Copenhagen. He was the Norwegian champion more than a dozen times, and represented his country at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
Although Nilsen remained a coach with Bærum, he also assisted crews throughout Norway, and in Sweden, and among his most notable achievements was his guidance of the Norwegian Hansen brothers, Alf and Frank, who won Olympic double sculls gold in Montreal in 1976. That year Nilsen also became the full-time head coach of the Spanish Rowing Federation, prompting him to devote some of his time to FISA activities.
It was at Spain’s national training center in Banyoles in Catalonia that he began creating a center of excellence for the FISA development program, and from there he successfully lobbied for the introduction of women’s international events in the late 1970s. But his job in Banyoles came to an abrupt end in 1980 when Pedro Abreu, a Cuban who financed the center, was kidnapped by Basque terrorists.
The following year Nilsen moved to coach Italy at the country’s new rowing center at Piediluco, a lakeside village in Umbria. At Piediluco there was good rowing water, a laboratory, a gymnasium, conference facilities and a clubhouse, as well as good food and accommodation for rowers in a former monastery. The world’s best coaches and athletes came there to eat, sleep and row together in a rare atmosphere, and it was during his years at Piediluco, with the support of FISA president Thomi Keller, that Nilsen began to revive the sport.
His four-year world rowing development program began in 1986 when he successfully raised $340,000 from Olympic Solidarity, a body responsible for supporting the growth of Olympic sports. The starter kits he provided to new confederations included shipping containers converted into boathouses fitted with four small racing boats as well as oars, gear and a toolbox for maintenance. He also persuaded wealthy teams to donate their restored boats to start-up clubs and in 1992 he sent his assistant, Matt Smith, on a seismic information discovery tour of 29 countries, 18 of them in Asia and six in Europe under the influence of Soviet.
He resigned from his Italian coaching job in 1990 and, with his second wife, Ingmarie (née Nilsson), moved to Strömstad in Sweden.
He officially retired from FISA at age 65 in 1997, but continued to work part-time on a stipend for them before finally ending his involvement in 2017.
Nilsen’s first marriage, in 1957, to Anne-Lise Jakobsen, ended in divorce in 1965. Ingmarie is survived by a daughter, Aina, from his first marriage, Ingmarie’s son, Stephen, from a previous relationship, two grandchildren and four great grandchildren. -grandchildren.
• Thor Sverre Nilsen, rowing coach and administrator, born 5 October 1931; died 5 October 2023
