Don Rowlands
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Donald David Rowlands | |||||||||||||||
| Born | 17 June 1926 | |||||||||||||||
| Died | 18 March 2015 (aged 88) | |||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Sir Donald David Rowlands KNZM CBE AM (17 June 1926 – 18 March 2015) was a New Zealand rower and businessman.
Rowlands was born in 1926, the third child of Ruby Winifred (née Harrison) and Horace Edward Rowlands, and was raised in the small town of Owhango where his father was a sawmill manager. When aged five, Rowlands contracted rheumatic fever and had congested lungs, and missed a year's school as a result.
Rowlands rowed for the West End Rowing Club in Auckland, and won nine New Zealand national rowing titles in the single sculls, double sculls and eights between 1948 and 1957.
At the 1950 British Empire Games he won the silver medal as part of the men's eight alongside crew members Donald Adam, Kerry Ashby, Murray Ashby, Bruce Culpan, Thomas Engel, Grahame Jarratt, Edwin Smith and Bill Tinnock. At the next British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, he won the gold medal in the men's single sculls.
He was included in the New Zealand team for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne but did not compete.
Rowlands served as a New Zealand rowing selector between 1960 and 1977, and managed the national rowing squads at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth and at the 1997 World Rowing Championships. He was chairman of the organising committee for the 1978 World Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro and patron of the 2010 World Rowing Championships at the same venue.
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