Beatrice Faumuina became the first New Zealander to win an event at a World Athletics Championships when she threw the discus 66.82 m at Athens in 1997.
The 24-year-old McKenzie won the prestigious race in a course record time of 2:15:45 ahead of American Tom Laris and Yutaka Aoki of Japan. He was the first New Zealander to win the Boston Marathon.
Allison Roe won the prestigious Boston race, taking nearly 8 minutes off the previous course record. She followed this performance six months later with victory in the New York marathon.
New Zealand athletes prepare for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada. Among the athletes featured are Olympic gold medallists Yvette Williams and Murray Halberg.
In June 1935 Lovelock returned to Princeton – the scene of his 1933 world record – to compete against the top American milers in what the media later dubbed the ‘Mile of the Century’
One of our greatest athletes,
Berlin Olympic gold medallist Jack
Lovelock led a remarkably full life before his tragic death in 1949, just a few days shy of
his 40th birthday.
The sports writer Peter Heidenstrom rated Yvette Williams as his 'New
Zealand Athlete of the Century'. There is no doubt that she was one of
our greatest-ever athletes - and probably the most versatile.
