FAMOUS OARSMAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1938, Page 7

FAMOUS OARSMAN

FORMER NEW ZEALANDER. SUCCESS AS COACH IN BERLIN. One of New Zealand’s most famous oarsmen of bygone days, T. Sullivan, of Auckland and Wellington, has been reviving old memories with friends in the rowing sheds on the Thames. Coach to the Lia Club, in Vienna, he was called to London on the death of his only daughter. He still rows and sculls regularly on the Ulta Donau, a backwater of the fast flowing Danube, for all his 70 years and grey hairs. Since early last year he has been coach to the Lia Club, the oldest in Austria. Before that, for 15 years, one of them before the war. he was coach to the Berliner Rudder Club. As New Zealand oarsmen with long memories know, Sullivan was a member of the famous Wellington Club crew which won the championship fours in 1889, 1890 and 1891. Later he went to Australia, where he turned professional and competed against Stanbury for'the world’s sculling title. His records established on the Parramatta and the Nepean stand to this day. In 1903 he arrived in England, won the championship sculls on the Thames that year, married and settled down. It was in 1913 that he first went to coach members of the Berliner Rudder Club. With a son, he was interned during the Great War. After being released,he became coach to the Amstel Club ’in Amsterdam, but it was not long before the president of the Berliner Club came to see him and persuaded him to return to Germany. During the period he coached the Berliners the club won 254 first-class races. The Berliner Club also won the fours at the Olympic Games at Los Angeles in 1932, when Sullivan renewed acquaintance with New Zealand friends. The feat of which he was most proud was the winning of the Kaiser Cup by the Berliners. The same club had to win the race four times in succession. -