In word association tests, people could think of a sport and think automatically of a coach, as if the two were one and the same.

There was Arthur Lydiard, athletics; Lois Muir, netball; and there was Rusty Robertson, rowing. Yet perversely, his prowess as a rowing coach was often more appreciated outside of New Zealand than it was in.

His first major success was at the 1962 Empire Games in Perth when he turned the Oamaru club coxed four into Empire champions.

At the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968, the coxed four he’d chosen and coached won the gold medal and four years later came his and rowing’s biggest moment when the eight won the gold medal at the Munich Olympics.

When the eight was “only” third, at the following Games in Montreal, Robertson was dumped as coach but continued to ply his talents in Australia until his death.