Noel Robins
2000 Australian Paralympic Team portrait of Robins
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| Full name | David Noel Robins | |||||||||
| Nationality |
 Australia
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| Born | 3 September 1935 Perth, Western Australia |
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| Died | 22 May 2003 (aged 67) Perth, Western Australia |
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Medal record
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David Noel Robins, OAM(3 September 1935 – 22 May 2003) was an Australian sailor. He began sailing as a child, and became partially quadriplegic after receiving a spinal fracture from a car crash at the age of 21. He was the skipper of Australia in the 1977 America's Cup, won the 1981 Admiral's Cup, and won a gold medal in sailing at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. He died on 22 May 2003, four weeks after being struck by a car.
Robins was born in Perth on 3 September 1935. He began sailing at the age of eleven. He graduated from Claremont Teachers College in 1955. At the age of 21, he was a passenger in a car crash on Mounts Bay Road, which left him with a broken neck and a fractured spine; as a result, he became a "walking quadriplegic", with reduced mobility and strength in all four limbs. He was married and had three children, two daughters and a son. He was known by his fellow sailors as "Stumbles".
Robins' first national sailing competition was the 14 ft Championship in 1958, and his first international competition was the Sydney Sailing World Championships in 1973. He won an international Soling Class, was selected by Alan Bond to be the skipper of Australia, the Australian challenger at the 1977 America's Cup, and was part of its crew at the 1980 America's Cup. In 1981 he skippered Hitchhiker II, which won that year's Admiral's Cup in Cowes and the Two Ton World Championship in Porto Cervo, Sardinia. For the 1987 America's Cup, he was the Executive director of the America's Cup Defence Committee of the Royal Perth Yacht Club.
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