David Leggat: Generations of 'Golden Girls' united by memory of their greatest day

New Zealand's greatest olympic women. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand's greatest Olympic women were celebrated in Auckland this week.

About time, too.

New Zealand has won 36 Olympic golds (37, should you choose to include swimmer Malcolm Champion's role in the Australasian team's 4 x 200m freestyle victory at Stockholm in 1912).

Only six have been won by women, so this is a small, rather special club.

Yvette Corlett (nee Williams) won the country's third gold at Helsinki in 1952; then followed Barbara Kendall 40 years later, Sarah Ulmer in 2004, Valerie Adams two years ago in Beijing and the Evers-Swindell twins, Caroline (now Meyer) and Georgina (now Earl).

They went one better, winning back-to-back double sculling gold at both Athens and Beijing.

Thursday was a night of nostalgia, when old memories were rekindled, an occasion where the female sporting elite were saluted.

All these women talked of the greatest day (or in the twins' case, days) of their sporting lives.

And it prompts the thought: whose should be ranked the finest of this group? It is, of course, a worthless exercise in any real terms.

This is a problem faced by a panel trying to compare merits of different sports across a range of generations.

For example, how to square up Kendall's boardsailing gold in Barcelona with Ulmer's pedalling power in the 3000m individual pursuit 12 years later at the Games in Athens?

Or Corlett's wonderful achievement in the long jump alongside Adams' terrific shot put triumph on a steamy night in China?

What it does provide is a chance to ponder what these women did, to try to imagine the emotions that were at play as they gained everlasting New Zealand fame.

And although it's a futile business sifting in search of the largest nugget in a pile of gold, it's also fun.

It is a subjective exercise.

You have your own parameters and, in the end, it doesn't matter. Your argument might be flawed, but you'll never be wrong.

Of the six golds, only Ulmer's was a world record to boot.

She whizzed around the track at 3min 24.537s, chomping 2s off the time she established in qualifying.

The first women's boardsailing Olympic gold was draped around Kendall's neck after her triumph in the Lechner class.

Meyer and Earl were favourites for their first gold, but had to overcome a wonky build-up and prevail in the tightest finish imaginable to get their double at the Shunyi course.

Adams is the only one of the six women still competing.

Her victory in Beijing was all about power and technique against two tough Belarusians, and had been a success predicted as long as 10 years previously for a prodigiously gifted field athlete.

Which leaves Corlett.

Boxer Ted Morgan and 1500m man Jack Lovelock were New Zealand's only Olympic champions before Corlett.

In this age of Facebook, iPad and a world where nothing is too hard to find if you look long enough, it should be remembered these were the days when New Zealanders would huddle around the wireless in the middle of the night to listen to big sports occasions overseas.

That was New Zealand when the multi-talented Corlett, already the Empire Games champion and destined to be so again in 1954, leapt to glory.

So try to imagine what was going on across the other side of the world in the middle of a winter's night as that news crackled through.

Corlett was first among these equals. There will be other Olympic champions, but never another first.