Thor Nilsen, who has died aged 92, was an international rower, coach and administrator who helped to 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 known as World Rowing), from 1981 to 1997, Nilsen was instrumental in modernising the sport, including by initiating round-the-year drug tests in 1981 (a rare thing in sport at the time), and setting 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 significant achievement came in 1986 when he secured funding for a four-year rowing development programme that included the launch of a world cup regatta series, the creation of a universal coaching manual and the launch of starter kits to help new rowing clubs set up with a minimum of fuss and expense. By the time Nilsen had stepped down in 2017, 150 countries were affiliated to FISA, up from 62 when he began his work.
Aside from his administrative achievements, Nilsen was also 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 world championship titles. For his overall contribution to the sport he was presented with FISA’s distinguished service award in 2003.
Nilsen was born in Bærum, near Oslo in Norway, to Leif, a stone haulier and union organiser, and Karen (nee Nygård), a domestic servant. He first began to row during the second world war, in his early teens, on the west side of the nearby Oslofjord and, after being apprenticed to a printer at 14, represented Norway at the European championships when he was 15.
Having left the printing trade in 1949, he acquired a stake in a company that sold swimming pools, but took a serious wrong turn when he tried to raise capital for the business by holding up a post office in the Oslo suburb of Stabekk. His gun was not loaded, but he spent almost two years in jail as a result, returning to printing on his release before setting up an advertising and marketing agency and then becoming involved in various business ventures over the next two decades.
In the meantime he continued with his part-time, amateur involvement in rowing, becoming chief coach at Bærum rowing club in 1958, but gave up his career as a rower after suffering a black-out during an Olympic qualification regatta in Copenhagen. He had been Norwegian champion more than a dozen times, and had represented his country at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
Although Nilsen remained as a coach with Bærum, he also provided help to crews throughout Norway, as well as 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 full-time chief coach for the Spanish Rowing Federation, which encouraged him to devote some of his time to FISA activities.
It was at Spain’s national training centre in Banyoles in Catalonia that he began to create a centre of excellence for FISA’s development programme, and it was from there that he successfully lobbied for the introduction of international women’s events in the late 1970s. But his position at Banyoles came to an abrupt end in 1980 when Pedro Abreu, a Cuban who financed the centre, was kidnapped by Basque terrorists.
The following year Nilsen moved to become Italy’s coach at the country’s new rowing centre at Piediluco, a village by a lake in Umbria. At Piediluco there was good rowing water, a lab, a gym, conference facilities and a clubhouse, plus good food and accommodation for rowers in a former monastery. The world’s top coaches and athletes came there to eat, sleep and row together in a rarefied atmosphere, and it was during his years at Piediluco that, with the backing of FISA’s president, Thomi Keller, that Nilsen really began to reinvigorate the sport.
His four-year global rowing development programme began in 1986 when he managed to wrest $340,000 from Olympic Solidarity, a body charged with supporting the growth of Olympic sports. The starter kits he provided for new federations included shipping containers converted into boatsheds that were equipped with four small racing boats plus oars, fittings and a toolbox for maintenance. He also persuaded wealthy teams to donate their renovated boats to start-up clubs and in 1992 sent his assistant, Matt Smith, on a whirlwind fact-finding tour of 29 countries, 18 of which were in Asia and six in Europe under Soviet influence.
He resigned from his Italian coaching job in 1990 and, with his second wife, Ingmarie (nee Nilsson), moved to Strömstad in Sweden.
He retired officially from FISA at the age of 65 in 1997, but continued working for them part-time on a stipend before finally ending his involvement in 2017.
Nilsen’s first marriage, in 1957, to Anne-Lise Jakobsen, ended in divorce in 1965. He is survived by Ingmarie, a daughter, Aina, from his first marriage, Ingmarie’s son, Stephen, from a previous relationship, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
• Thor Sverre Nilsen, rowing coach and administrator, born 5 October 1931; died 5 October 2023
