Tonks Secures World Rowing’s Top Honour

Tonks Secures World Rowing’s Top Honour

New Zealand Rowing's head coach Dick Tonks has been honoured by the world governing body of rowing FISA as the sport's top coach for 2010.

It is the second time Tonks has won the FISA World Coach of the Year Award. He won it first in 2005 and the incredible run of success for New Zealand rowers has continued unabated since. At the 2010 Rowing World Championships at Karapiro in November, New Zealand crews took three titles amongst a ten medal haul- and all were following a programme introduced and developed over a decade and more by the legendary Tonks.

"Richard is often seen as a man of few words, but when he speaks people listen,” explained Rowing New Zealand High Performance Manager Alan Cotter. “ He has a knack of being able to read his athletes and he receives huge respect from coaches and athletes alike. He has been in many ways the key part of the programme that we have today. Sure, you have to have the athletes, but Dick is a massive part of the success the sport has enjoyed and it is always great to see real, global recognition from the sport for that."

Tonks received his award at FISA’s annual World Rowing Awards Gala dinner held at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley, Great Britain as a prelude to the 2011 World Rowing Coaches Conference.

Tonks has been the coach behind all of the country’s top rowers for the last two decades including Brenda Lawson and Philippa Baker, Rob Waddell, Nicky Coles and Juliette Haigh, Mahe Drysdale, Eric Murray and Hamish Bond and of course, the Evers-Swindell twins. His successful programmes have also spawned hugely successful Junior and Under 23 rowing programmes as well and he has established New Zealand's rowing team as the sport’s benchmark in small boat rowing.

FISA President Denis Oswald commented that the nominees were of the highest calibre across all of the five award categories. “We started off with more than 50 names in some of the categories and amongst these there was no shortage of nominees with top credentials.”

Other winners in FISA's annual awards included the Czech Republic’s Men’s Single Sculler Ondrej Synek, Great Britain’s dynamic duo of Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger from the Women’s Double Sculls as well as dominant adaptive rower Tom Aggar also of Great Britain. Hart Perry of the United States was honoured with the Distinguished Service award for his long serving role in rowing.

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