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24 Victoria St, Cambridge , NZ | CONTACT

Opening Hours: Mon – Fri 10am – 4 pm, Weekends and Public Holidays 10am – 2pm.

$ FREE ADMISSION   24 Victoria St, Cambridge , NZ | CONTACT

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Richard Tonks MNZM
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Richard Tonks was a rower and champion coach.  In 1970 he rowed for Otago in Dunedin and was able to earn a place on the national team in 1971.  By 1972 he was stroking the New Zealand coxless four, which went on to win silver at the Munich Olympics.

In 1994 world champion scullers Philippa Baker and Brenda Lawson asked Tonks to coach them in the double, leading to gold at Indianapolis, bronze at Tampere in 1995 and making the final at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

After this, Tonks began coaching Rob Waddell, who would go on to win gold in the single scull at Cologne in 1998 and St Catharine’s in 1999 before taking the gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.  In 2000 he moved North to Karapiro and has been influential in the careers of rowers such as Olympic medalists Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, Mahé Drysdale, Nicky Coles, Juliette Haigh, Hamish Bond and Eric Murray. He has been the New Zealand rowing coach at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Dick Tonks has won the Halberg Awards’ Coach of the Year five times—in 1999, 2004, 2005, 2009 and 2012; more than any other coach in the award’s 27-year history—and has been named a finalist twelve times.  He has also been awarded World Rowing Coach of the Year at the World Rowing Awards three times—2005, 2010 and 2012—since its inception in 2002.  Tonks is currently (2025) the only person to have won the award more than once.

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