Sport

In the 2010s New Zealand’s women’s hockey team was consistently among the best in the world, but until 2018 it had not won a major tournament

Valerie Adams won gold in the shot put at the London Olympic Games. It was awarded a week after the competition, when the intial winner was disqualified for testing positive for an anabolic steroid.

The All Blacks won the Webb Ellis Cup for the second time in seven attempts, defending grimly to hold onto an 8–7 lead over France in front of 61,000 spectators at Eden Park, Auckland.

Just how close the New Zealand and Australian netball teams were became clear as the match, the longest official game of netball ever played, stretched over 84 pulsating minutes. 

At the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, 15-year-old Sophie Pascoe won her first medal, a silver in the women's 100m butterfly S10. She went on to win gold medals in 100m backstroke S10, 100m breaststroke SB9 and 200m individual medley SM10. 

The first stage win by a New Zealander in the Tour de France came in a team time trial. Although Chris Jenner didn't finish with the core of his Credit Agricole team, he shared in the stage win and got to stand on the podium.

The Auckland Warriors played their first match in the New South Wales Rugby League’s expanded Winfield Cup competition.

The speed skier and bungy pioneer planned the 110-m leap meticulously. His dozen-strong team hid on the tower overnight and Hackett jumped at dawn. He described it as ‘one small step for a man, a bloody great leap for the adventure tourism industry.’

In 1984, Susan Devoy became the first New Zealander to win the women’s title at the prestigious British Open squash tournament, the ‘Wimbledon of Squash’.

The New Zealand football team's famous 2-0 victory in Sydney was a defining moment in their epic qualifying campaign for the 1982 World Cup finals.

Trans-Tasman sporting relations hit a new low at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when Australian captain Greg Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to bowl the final delivery of a 50-over cricket international against New Zealand underarm (along the ground).

Chasing 137 for victory in the first test at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, England was bowled out for 64, with Richard Hadlee taking 6 for 26.

Following in the footsteps of Jack Lovelock and Peter Snell, Walker won gold in the Olympic 1500 m. Black African nations boycotted the Games in protest at the All Blacks' tour of South Africa

American Lynne Cox swam from the North Island to the South in 12 hours 7 minutes. The fourth person to do so, she battled heavy seas and strong winds.

The men’s 1500-m final was run on the last day of the 1974 Christchurch Commonwealth Games. Tanzanian Filbert Bayi ran the first 800 m in an astonishing 1 minute 52.2 seconds, conserved energy on the third lap, and held off 22-year-old New Zealander John Walker to set a new world record of 3:32.16.

Snell had successfully defended his 800-m title earlier at the Tokyo Olympics and completed the coveted middle-distance double with gold in the 1500 m. Fellow Kiwi John Davies won bronze.

First held at the Masterton War Memorial Stadium in 1961, the Golden Shears competition has become the iconic event for the shearing and wool-handling industry in New Zealand.

New Zealand sport enjoyed one of its greatest days in Rome’s Olympic Stadium. Peter Snell won the 800 m and Murray Halberg won the 5000 m.

Despite protests, the controversial rugby tour went ahead. The issue of sporting ties with South Africa would eventually split the country in 1981.

New Zealand was already 3–0 down in the series going into the fourth and final test at Eden Park in Auckland. Their West Indies opponents included household names such as Gary Sobers and Everton Weekes, who had broken batting records for a New Zealand season.

Bert Sutcliffe top-scored with 11 runs as New Zealand was skittled for the lowest total in test cricket history – 26 runs. 

Yvette Williams (later Corlett) won the long jump to become New Zealand’s first female Olympic medallist.

Jack Lovelock won New Zealand’s first Olympic athletics gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in a race witnessed by 120,000 spectators – including Adolf Hitler.

The Ivy League Princeton University hosted an annual elite mile race during the 1930s. New Zealand medical student Jack Lovelock, who had set a world record there in 1933, was invited to return in 1935 to run in what became known as the ‘Mile of the Century’.

Jack Lovelock's run at Princeton University broke Jules Ladoumegue’s record for the mile by 1.6 seconds. The race was dubbed the 'greatest mile of all time' by Time Magazine.

The character in the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of fire (1981) was based on Arthur Porritt, who won a bronze medal for New Zealand in the 100 m at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Violet Waldron was New Zealand’s first female Olympian, and part of New Zealand’s first Olympic team of four. She competed in freestyle swimming in the 1920 Antwerp Summer Olympics.

By winning the light-heavyweight championship, Timaru boxer Bob Fitzsimmons became the first man to have won world professional boxing titles in three weight divisions.

As rugby grew in popularity in New Zealand, it became necessary to standardise the administration of the game in the colony. Despite some opposition, a New Zealand Rugby Football Union was founded.

The first representative New Zealand rugby team played its first match, defeating a Wellington XV 9-0 before embarking on a tour of New South Wales.