Christopher Davidge, the triple Olympic rower and former British Chef de Mission who died three days before Christmas aged 85, was a remarkable man. As I learned three years ago when I made what was - for me at least - a memorable visit to interview this athlete-turned-administrator who had been involved in an extraordinary series of important sporting moments.

Like many of his forbears, Christopher Guy Vere Davidge was a lawyer, educated at Eton College and Oxford University. As he stood in the wide doorway of his family home, a handsome Georgian house in Little Houghton, near Northampton, his form was a little stooped but still clearly recognisable as that of the man who was known during his competitive days as a stroke of monumental power and determination. His outstretched hand was huge; his eyes, above high cheekbones, piercingly blue.

Davidge was involved in the Olympics over 36 years. He started as a rower at the 1952 Helsinki Games and signed off at Seoul 1988, where he was chairman of the Regattas Commission for the sport's world governing body, FISA.  "I suppose my experience has been pretty unique," he admitted.

Christopher Davidge (third rower on the right) and his Oxford University crew-mates prepare to launch in the 1951 Boat Race, where they sank in rough water ©Popperfoto/Getty Images

Davidge's experiences in three Boat Races served as a keynote for his subsequent sporting career; all were dramatic.

By the time of the 1949 Boat Race he was established at stroke in the Oxford boat which lost to Cambridge University by a quarter of a length - one "dead heat" apart, the closest margin in the history of the event until the 2003 Boat Race.

Elected President of Oxford University Boat Club the next year, Davidge was unable to row because of jaundice. Unusually, he was re-elected in 1951, and sat in the Oxford boat that sank in rough weather shortly after the start of that year's race, before suffering a heavy defeat in the re-run on the following Monday.

The 1952 Boat Race, in which Davidge was again at stroke, saw Oxford win by six feet. This was the famous contest rowed in a snowstorm during which the BBC radio commentator John Snagge made his classic, despairing comment: "I don't know who's in the lead...it's either Oxford or Cambridge!"

That year's Olympics, in Helsinki, offered Davidge another claim to fame as he secured a place in the team rowing in the pair with his old school team-mate David Callender.

"We were up against experienced international pairs - we hadn't raced internationally at all - and we weren't really quite up to it," he recalled. "As with everybody else, we came fourth. But it was a great achievement to get to the Olympics."

Christopher Davidge (right) pictured at Henley in 1958 preparing for that year's British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Four years later Davidge was in the Leander eight involved in a three-race series against a composite Amateur Rowing Association crew to determine Olympic selection for the Melbourne Games of 1956. He described the process as "an absolute farce". 

After beating the composite crew in the first two races, Leander lost the last one after the selectors had swapped two crew members round, placing at number two a rower Davidge characterised with a grim smile as "a boat-stopper". 

"The selectors, who were three fairly elderly gentlemen, had got the result they wanted," Davidge said. "Because for some reason or other they didn't like us."

But when the selected crew performed badly at the European Championships, a new composite was put together for the forthcoming Games in Australia - including Davidge.

"It still wasn't a good eight, but we were much better than the one which had gone to the European Championships," Davidge said. "We didn't do very well but we weren't a complete disgrace."

The rowing was at Ballarat - about 80 miles from Melbourne. "We got there thinking we were going out to a lovely Australian summer," Davidge recalled. "Like hell. It was as cold as blazes. There was no heating and we were in Army barracks. The first thing our team had to do was to go and buy a whole load of electric fires."

The United States eight after winning Olympic gold at Ballarat during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics ©Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

The 1960 Rome Olympics offered Davidge the prospect of a tangible reward. But fate was to decree otherwise. Davidge, John Vigurs, Colin Porter and Mike Beresford were in a coxless four that had reached the final in style. But on the morning of the big race Beresford turned out to have suffered a recurrence of malaria overnight. He was deemed able to row - just.

"We were not going to win, but I felt we would definitely have won a silver medal if Mike had not gone sick," Davidge remembered. "That was really disappointing. Because as far as I was concerned it was going to be our last Olympics, as we were already in our thirties by then. With Mike being at bow there was the question of keeping the boat straight. We had to sort of nurse him through, and we finished fifth."

Davidge resumed his active Olympic career at Mexico 1968, where he was rowing team manager. The shooting of hundreds of students by police in Mexico City during protests against the Government provided a shocking background in the lead-up to the Games.

"I knew all about it, as I was working closely with the general team HQ," he recalled. "We were most anxious that news of this didn't get back to England as we had some young competitors in the team and we were very concerned that parents might get the wind up. Because it was very nasty indeed - something like 300 students were shot dead, and the tanks were out.

"So all the team were very closely confined to barracks. The buses all had armed troops on them. There was no question of any members of the team going out into the city, which was very sad really. The team members began to smell a rat, but we were anxious not to tell them what was going on."

Four years later Davidge had another set of shocking circumstances to deal with when he was the British team's Deputy Chef de Mission at the Munich Olympics, at which members of the Israeli team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.

"Everybody was thoroughly shaken," Davidge said. "The immediate worry was that the Games might be stopped, but that discussion was at a higher level from me."

By the time the Olympics reached Montreal, in 1976, Davidge was Chef de Mission of the British team, leading them out in the Opening Ceremony. This time around, the chief difficulty before the Games lay in the demand issued by 17 African countries that New Zealand - whose rugby players had recently played against apartheid South Africa - should withdraw or risk an African boycott.

Davidge explained how the New Zealand Chef de Mission had come to him for advice in the days preceding the Opening Ceremony in Montreal.

"I said: 'You do not under any circumstances agree to withdraw. Rugby football is not part of the Olympic Games. Therefore there is no reason whatsoever why the Olympic team should be crucified, as it were. You stand firm.'"

New Zealand did stand firm - something for which John Walker, who won the 1500 metres gold, was particularly grateful. And Kenya and 16 other African nations ended up boycotting the Games in protest...

John Walker wins the Olympic 1500m gold at Montreal 1976 after the British Chef de Mission had persuaded his New Zealand counterpart not to withdraw from the Games despite the threat of an African boycott ©Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

In 1980, Margaret Thatcher's Government sought to bolster Britain's "special relationship" with the United States by calling on Britain's Olympic athletes to join the US boycott of the Moscow Games following Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.

Davidge, as President of the Amateur Rowing Association, was given a mandate by his Council to stand up for rowers wishing to attend those Olympics.

He was summoned to the Foreign Office to account for himself and his sport to the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. Shortly before he did so Carrington's Parliamentary Private Secretary, Douglas Hurd - with whom Davidge had been at Eton - came into the waiting room for an informal chat.

"I said, 'I hope I'm not going to get into too much hot water, but I'm not complying,'" Davidge recalled. "I put my case to him and he said, 'Good luck, have a go.'

"Anyway, I was duly ushered in to see the Foreign Secretary. My case was quite simply this: 'If you, the British Government, will stop trading with Russia, we will support you. But we, as sportsmen, are not prepared to be used as the whip for protest.'

"He was very gentlemanly about it. He said, 'I quite understand your position. But we must agree to disagree.'

"It was a meeting I shall never forget. Because they were trying to pick us off sport-by-sport, and we were an obvious first target."

Lord Carrington, Britain's Foreign Secretary, pictured in office in 1980, the year his efforts to get Christopher Davidge, then President of the Amateur Rowing Association, to sign up to Margaret Thatcher's plan to boycott the Moscow Games were genteelly rebuffed
©Getty Images

Davidge was to attend two more Olympics in his FISA role - Los Angeles in 1984 and then Seoul in 1988. He vividly recalls his experience on the final day of racing in 1984, when the rowing got underway at Lake Casitas in thick mist. Davidge, in the launch which followed the crews, was able to witness Steve Redgrave win the first of his five Olympic golds in the coxed four.

"I was the only Englishman who actually saw them row the race and win, because the spectators could hardly see anything from the bank," he said with a smile. For Davidge, it was a unique distinction in what was a unique Olympic career.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.