Noted swim authority ‘advocate for athletes’

World swimming authority, writer and statistician Nick Thierry has died at the age of 73.

SwimNews.com, an online swim magazine Thierry founded, said he died in a Toronto hospital Tuesday.

Friend and colleague Patricia Young said Thierry suffered a stroke last month.

Thierry, who was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2001, was the official records keeper and statistician for FINA, swimming’s international governing body, for decades. He compiled a comprehensive database of times, records and rankings for the sport.

“He was for many years FINA’s most valuable source of swimming rankings, a superb and brilliant work very much appreciated by the coaches, athletes, media and fans of the sport in general,” FINA said Tuesday on its website.

Thierry was born Dec. 2, 1938, in Hungary. He fell in love with swimming when his family moved to Cuba and then Toronto.

He swam competitively for the University of Toronto and began coaching there in 1961. Thierry completed an architecture degree in 1964 and worked in that field for four years.

Swimming was his first love, however. He coached Canadian swimmers who qualified for the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympic teams, including Angela Coughlan, a relay bronze medallist in 1968.

He also served on the administrations of various swim organizations in Canada.

Thierry saw a need for statistics and record-keeping in the sport, so swimmers would know who and what times they were chasing when they trained.

“He was always an advocate for the athletes,” said Young, a former sports editor of the Hamilton Spectator and associate sports editor at the Globe and Mail. “He created a world-ranking database that was second to none in the world. My nickname for him was ‘statman.’ ”

Thierry founded the monthly Swimnews Magazine in 1974 and started SwimNews.com in the ’90s. Both were well-respected sources of domestic and international news in the swim community.

“Everybody respected him because they knew he was coming from such strength in knowledge,” Young said. “He had been at his desk that day when he suffered his stroke.”

Thierry is survived by his brother George Thierry. A funeral service will be held Thursday in Toronto.