Robert L. (Bob) Wilson MH (1938 to 2022) Vice Patron

Robert L. (Bob) Wilson MH

(1938 to 2022) Vice Patron

WORDS: MIKE TANNER

Member since 1966 Commodore 1978-1980 Rear Commodore 1974-1978 General Committee 1967-1972, 1974-1983 Rowing Captain 1967-1971 Balloting Committee 1968-1972, 1973-1974 Rowing Committee 1967-1975 Planning Committee 1975-1976 (Chairman) Vice Patron in 2010-2022 Noel Croucher Award 1998 Robert Wilson, a Vice Patron of the Club, passed away peacefully in Portugal on 4 November 2022 with his partner Ulrike by his side. Bob was recently interviewed as a part of the Club’s series of video interviews of key members who have contributed significantly to the Club over many years. The video will be released shortly and will provide a fitting record of Bob’s enthusiasm and dedication to the interests of the Club and its members as well as to his related activities in sports development in Hong Kong. His untimely death has demonstrated the value to the Club of the making and maintaining such historical records.

One of Bob’s guiding principles was “If elected or appointed to serve an organisation it is insufficient to merely maintain the status quo, there must be progress and at the end of the term of office the organisation must be in better shape than at the beginning”. The successful development of rowing in Hong Kong and the development of dragon boating from a purely annual Chinese festival into a global year-round sport for millions are rewarding outcomes of his involvement. He had a similar impact on the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and on other organisations with which he was involved. In many ways he applied this principle to life itself and to his place in the world.

Bob was always very generous with his time. He was a positive person with a strong belief that nothing was impossible – he just had to find a way to bring it to fruition. During the formation of the Rowing Association in the late 1970s, sceptics said that Hong Kong youth would not be interested in sports and particularly rowing, but Bob believed otherwise. He has since been proved right many times over – he anticipated the changes in society which would make sports a more and more important activity for young people to balance their busy Hong Kong lifestyles. Bob understood the attractions and benefits which sport can bring to all communities.

In 2019 Bob and Ulrike, his partner in life, business and historical research, made a second home in northern Portugal, close to the Minho river, on which they enjoyed sculling as well as cycling and walking on the Ecovia alongside the river.

Bob is survived by Ulrike and his three children by previous marriage David, Andrew and Julia.

A celebration of Bob’s life will be held at a future date to be announced.

In the space available here, it is very difficult to properly record Bob’s many contributions to the Club and to Hong Kong over more than 50 years and to do full justice to his life and achievements. The following record will inevitably have some omissions. Many of us will have our own memories and stories of Bob and his exploits and it is hoped to provide a future opportunity for these to be shared by Club members.

home in Cannon Street, overlooking Kellett Island and the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. In 1968 he joined the Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, later Manulife, with which he spent the remainder of his working career.

Bob joined the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club in January 1966. As an experienced rower, he was keen to pursue his rowing activities and began immediately by representing the Club in the Far Eastern Amateur Rowing Association (FEARA) annual regatta in Manila that year, winning the single sculls and being a crew member in the winning double sculls and coxed four events. It was an auspicious start to his time with the Club.

His love of rowing had begun at Kingston Grammar School and continued with Molesey Boat Club in the UK where in 1963 he stroked the winning senior eight in a field of 30 crews at the Marlow Amateur Regatta, then the second most important regatta in the UK after Henley Royal Regatta. He was elected Vice-Captain of Molesey in 1964 and became Captain in 1965 and, although moving to Hong Kong he maintained his membership

Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club

Bob’s record as a member of Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club is long and outstanding. He was Rowing Captain from 1967 – 1971. In 1968 he broke the record for rowing around Hong Kong Island in a coxed pair with Des Robinson (they repeated the feat in 1978). He won FEARA Championship single sculls in Singapore (1970) and Brunei (1971) and then in 1972 with RHKYC as host, he organised the FEARA Championships in Hebe Haven. In 1973 he took up sailing, racing the Club Bosun dinghies and one of the first Lasers in Hong Kong. He also crewed on Ron McAulay’s Mamamouchi before eventually returning to rowing.

Bob continued as a General Committee member after his tenure as Rowing Captain and in 1974, he was elected Rear Commodore with specific responsibility to form and chair a Planning Committee and prepare a development plan for the Club’s first serious upgrade since the Club resumed occupancy after WW2. The Preliminary Development Plan was approved by Members in October that year and from 1975 to 1978 Bob oversaw the redevelopment works which modernised the Club’s facilities, providing the Bistro, Compass Room, Gun Room, Ward Room, swimming pool, workshop building, travel lift and the merger with Shelter Cove Yacht Club.

Bob was elected Commodore in 1978 and during his 2-year term he succeeded in introducing the Electoral General Meeting and the Nominating Committee. In this period he represented the Club on the HKYA Council.

He was a recipient of the Noel Croucher Award in 1998.

In 2011 he was most deservedly appointed a Vice Patron of the Club.

In recent years, assisted by his partner Ulrike, Bob devoted time to researching the history of rowing in Hong Kong and Asia and, as a contribution to the Club’s history, had written more than 40 biographies of its former Commodores and Rowing Captains. His broader research into the history of rowing in the region will be made available to the

Club. Bob was very keen to ensure that these documents be maintained as a permanent, easily accessible record. It would be his wish that the Club continues to update and preserve such records into the future.

Sports Promotion and Organisation in Hong Kong

Outside of what was already a life-time of commitment to the Club, Bob took an active and enthusiastic interest in promoting sport to the community. He understood the power of sport to change lives and the need for Hong Kong’s crowded urban environment to offer opportunities for people of all ages – but especially its young people – to be involved in a sport of their choice.

He also felt that major sports Clubs, including the Yacht Club, had a responsibility to promote sports to the community.

His contribution was wide ranging, visionary and enthusiastic, firstly in rowing, but also in dragon boating and through serving on a range of government and quasi-government committees and organisations.

(1) Rowing – Sport for the Community and a Hong Kong Rowing Team

The promotion of rowing had been a primary object of the Club since 1905 when the Club had merged with the Hong Kong Boat Club, a rowing club. But by 1978 there were only some 25 rowing members, all expatriate and there were no local rowers in Hong Kong. In May 1978 Bob and six other members founded the Hong Kong Amateur Rowing Association (HKARA) with the objective of making rowing available to the general public. Bob became its President, in which position he served until 2015, guiding and encouraging the Association throughout this time to maintain high expectations and sound sports policies. He was appointed Honorary Life President in 2016.

The Club strongly supported HKARA in its very early years providing boat storage space at Middle Island and the first local rowers were very quickly recruited to the sport with Club members providing coaching and encouragement. But at the time of the HKARA’s foundation rowing was virtually an unknown sport in the wider Hong Kong community and the Association had no facilities, no boats and no money and one of its founding principles was that its officers and council members would not be expected to donate anything to the Association apart from their time and expertise. Developing rowing looked to be very challenging, but in June 1981 the Association published ‘A Comprehensive Development Plan for Rowing’, mostly written by Bob, proposing the construction of district rowing centres. The plan received warm support from the Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose and other senior government officials.

The first such district centre was to be in Sha Tin. Bob was instrumental in obtaining land and Hong Kong Jockey Club funding for the Association’s first (temporary) rowing centre in 1982. This was quickly followed by plans for the permanent Sha Tin Rowing Centre which, again with Jockey Club funding, opened in 1985 with the hosting of the 1st Asian Rowing Championships. This event marked a full circle for Bob’s involvement in Asian rowing – the Asian Rowing Federation (ARF), which awarded these 1st Championships to Hong Kong, had been formed 3 years earlier, and was born out of the many years of Interport regattas in which Bob had been a regular and very successful competitor around Asia. The Club’s rowers had always been loyal participants in these events and played a key role in the formation of ARF.

In 2000, a second rowing centre was constructed at Shek Mun, again with Jockey Club funding, to support the growing number of rowers and rowing activities. The Association has since its formation introduced tens of thousands of people to the sport of rowing from all sectors of the community.

Rowing was added to the sports of the Jubilee Sports Centre (later the Hong Kong Sports Institute) in 1986. The Hong Kong Rowing Team, which for many years now has almost wholly comprised local athletes who have come up through the Association’s school development programmes, has had consistent success in Asian Games and several medals at world level and has been represented at every Olympics since 1992. Many people have

Wan Ng, Bob Wilson, John Woo and Mike Tanner at the 2018 Around the Island Race

contributed to these achievements, but much of it comes back to the vision and initiative of Bob Wilson, who was always of the view that “of course it can be done”.

Bob was a great believer in the value of Clubs, whether large or small, as the key to successful sport promotion. Putting this belief into action, in 2010 he founded with Ulrike and others the Lantau Island Rowing Club (later merged with the Lantau Boat Club), now an active and successful coastal rowing club in Discovery Bay.

Any record of Bob’s extensive contribution to rowing in Hong Kong would not be complete without mentioning his initiative to explore the potential for coastal rowing, using boats which allow rowing in off-shore waters. A popular part of rowing in France and Spain, the World Rowing Federation had seen the value of coastal rowing for many countries where the standard flat-water 2,000m course was not available or realistic. Bob recognised at an early stage that Hong Kong had excellent conditions for coastal rowing (it might have had a lot to do with his own record of rowing around Hong Kong Island!) and in 2004 he recommended to the Club to invest in coastal rowing boats, which were introduced at Middle Island and more recently allowed rowing to return to Kellett Island and the harbour. Bob’s recognition of the suitability of coastal rowing for Hong Kong waters was proven when in 2019 the HKCRA organised the World Rowing Coastal Championships in Hong Kong Harbour with the Club hosting the event and providing logistic and equipment support and expertise to make the Championships a massive success for all involved. (2) Dragon Boating – from Hong Kong to the World

In 1978, following a regionally televised confrontation between crews at the first Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races, Bob Wilson saw a major opportunity for Hong Kong and approached the organiser – the Hong Kong Tourist Association – to offer the expertise of HKARA officials to organise the following year’s races. The offer was accepted and Bob, recognising that the races had to be run as serious competitive events if they were to be a success, drafted rules of racing and went on to lead the same group in managing the races until 1997, in which time the event grew to be the biggest of its kind in the world and dragon boating flourished to become a major international sport in its own right. Bob chaired the foundation meeting of the International Dragon Boat Federation in Hong Kong in 1991 and served as its President until 1994. In 2022, the IDBF named Bob to its Hall of Fame.

(3) Hong Kong Sports Promotion

Bob began his contribution to general sports promotion in Hong Kong with his membership of the Council for Recreation and Sport (CRS), a government body, from 1985 to 1989. In this time, he chaired the Committee on Safety in Outdoor Pursuits. He was appointed as a Board Member of the Jubilee Sports Centre in 1987 and served in this role for 9 years.

Always alert for new ideas and better ways of doing things, Bob drafted and submitted a paper to the Chief Secretary in 1986 proposing the creation of an independent executive sports council to replace the CRS. His initiative resulted in a government consultancy, “The Way Ahead”, which led to the establishment of the Sports Development Board (SDB) in 1989. Bob went on to serve as a Board member of the SDB from 1989 to 1996 in which time he chaired the Hong Kong Coaching Committee and introduced the Hong Kong Coaching Awards. He was also on the Committee of Trustees and a member of the Sports Development and Planning Committee. In each of these roles he was an active and contributing member, always taking his responsibilities seriously and always looking for ways to improve strategies and policies for the benefit of the eventual participants and the overall development of sport. (4) The Hong Kong Water Sports Council (HKWSC)

Bob saw that the potential for water sports in Hong Kong was under-recognised by government and felt that a centralised voice was needed to raise their profile. In 2013 he was instrumental in setting up the Hong Kong Water Sports Council (HKWSC), an umbrella organisation composed of water sports associations, to coordinate and promote water sports. He served as its Chairman until 2015.

Serving the Community

One other interest of Bob’s, away from sport, should be mentioned here. From 1978 to 2010 Bob was a member of the Rotary Club of Hong Kong South, serving as its President from 2000 to 2001. As a Rotarian, in 1982 he helped establish Watchdog Limited, a charitable organisation whose objective was to provide early education for children with intellectual disabilities, particularly those suffering from Down’s syndrome. He drafted the Memorandum and Articles of Association and wrote the successful funding application to the Hong Kong Jockey Club that allowed Watchdog to begin operating.

Government Recognition

In 2013 the Government awarded Bob the Medal of Honour (MH) in recognition of his valuable contribution to the promotion of the development of rowing. Bob will be very sadly missed by the many people who had the good fortune to know him, both within the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and elsewhere. He will be celebrated for his many achievements. His contributions will also be anonymously recognised by those tens of thousands of people, young and old, who never knew him but have had, or will have, their lives significantly changed for the better by opportunities given to them through rowing and other sports by the vision, belief and work of Bob Wilson. He will be very well remembered.