Where are they now? Phil Gifford talks to New Zealand's greatest road runner Anne Audain

Anne Audain competes in the women's 10,000m at Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland during the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games. Photo / Photosport

Anne Audain's remarkable life reads like a storybook fable. Physical and political adversity, and triumph over both? Tick. A shadowy villain, and a knight in shining armour? Tick. And even, as there always should be in a fable, a happy ending, with a world record, a gold medal, and recognition as the best female road runner in history.

As a child growing up in Ōtāhuhu she suffered from a debilitating foot problem. The joints behind her big toes would swell, and make walking, even in orthopaedic boots, painful.

At 13 her feet were operated on by Auckland surgeon Ross Nicholson, and at 14 the kid who had struggled to walk joined the local Ōtāhuhu athletics club.

Now living in Evansville, Indiana, married to Chuck Whobrey, the president of the local Teamsters' Union, Audain this week recalled how "In the beginning I found it really difficult to get running shoes that worked. I was very forceful, pushing forward on my feet, and ended up with a lot of really damaged toenails because my feet were having to adjust to running. But after a couple of years, and to this day, I have no problem with my feet."

From a distance it might have seemed, as success on the track over 800 metres and 1500 metres, and in cross country, arrived in her late teens that being coached by a world-famous athlete, English immigrant Gordon Pirie, who had set five world records in Europe in the 1950s, was a perfect match.

But behind the scenes Pirie was a dictatorial, sometimes cruel, taskmaster. "The more attention I got," Audain says, "the more possessive Gordon became." When she was only 16 Pirie, then a 40-year-old married man propositioned her. She rejected those advances, but continued to be trained by him.

The breaking point came in 1981 when Audain qualified for a world 3000 metres championship in Holland. For a month before the race they trained at a rustic, isolated base in a forest outside Oslo In Norway. Pirie took away her passport and all the money she had with her. He'd tell her she was too heavy. "One day I had to only eat potatoes. The next day I had to drink less water. He got really nutty." When they got to Holland he wanted to room with her. Audain was outraged, locked her door, and barely ventured out.

Anne Audain as a child in orthopaedic boots.

The day after running the 3000 metres, finishing out of the placings, Pirie saw her off at Amsterdam airport. "I'll see you in New Zealand," he said. "No Gordon, you won't," said Audain. It was the last time they ever spoke. Pirie died in 1991 in England.

She might have given up on running altogether, but then John Davies, a 1964 Olympic 1500 metres bronze medallist, and one of the most decent, thoughtful people to ever grace New Zealand sport, agreed to become her coach.

"I wouldn't have continued without John," Audain told me this week. "I wrote a eulogy for his funeral (in 2003) saying that I would not be who I was if John had not said yes to coaching me."

Under the informed, level headed guidance of Davies, Audain became the superstar of the newly booming 1980s road race circuit in America. In the process she would be a central figure in overturning what had become hypocritical amateur regulations in the sport.

Audain had travelled in Europe on the track circuit in the 1970s with John Walker, Rod Dixon, and Dick Quax. She'd see how so-called amateur athletes there were paid under the table.

"Those guys were great to me, and Rod in particular would say to me, 'Annie, the roads are made for you. Those distances are perfect for you. You've got to go.' My niche was 5km up to the half marathon, but at the 1980 Olympics they still only had the 800 and 1500 metres for women."

Audain made a public stand when she won the Cascade runoff in Portland Oregon, the home of Nike, in 1982. She made it clear she had taken the US$10,000 (equivalent to US$30,000 today) prize money.

"I had no hesitation at all," she says now. "I also knew that if I got banned (as she was by the International Amateur Athletics Federation) that day, the American race directors would ignore it. And they did. I raced all the rest of 1982 on the road race circuit."

In the background coach Davies was working on two fronts. One with Audain, to persuade her to qualify for, and run in, the then new 3000 metres event at the '82 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. The other lobbying behind the scenes with athletics officials to lift her ban.

It was a close run thing. Audain ran the qualifying time, and was selected in the New Zealand team for Brisbane. But the IAAF had still not cleared her.

"I was in the Games village, in late September, and we were having the team photograph. They presented me with a world record plaque from the IAAF for the 5000 metres record I'd set in March. The ban had been lifted with one week to go. John was the one always saying to me that he knew what was going to happen. "They're going to give you the okay.'"

Anne Audain.

The 3000 metres final was run exactly 13 years to the day after Audain had her feet operated on as a 13-year-old. She'd promised Davies, who was commentating on the race for TVNZ, she wouldn't run from the front.

But Audain drew the inside lane in a big field, so to avoid being jostled or spiked she did become the pacemaker from the gun.

On the last lap England's Wendy Smith, the hot favourite, challenged.

"It was very windy, and I could hear when we were going down the back straight that she was breathing harder than me. It was a matter of waiting, but I was in control. I think it came down to thinking, 'I've led this far, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let her beat me'."

Audain kicked on for a convincing win. "The medal really represents the process I went through to get to that point, and the sheer emotion of knowing that I never gave up."

Her extraordinary career on the road continued for another decade. She ran 112 races on the American circuit and won 75, placing in the top three 90 per cent of the time.

"John (Davies) and I always had a plan. We would sit down each year, and talk about how many races I was going to run. We never deviated from the plan for the sake of making more money. I think that's what kept me so consistent and so healthy."

When she retired, she was still winning, but the fire to compete had faded. Living then in Boise, Idaho, she gave back to her community, setting up the St Luke's women's celebration in 1993, which grew in the late '90s to be the biggest women's sporting event in the States, with up to 17,000 women of all ages and abilities running and walking a variety of distances.

Moving to live in her husband's hometown, 2800km away from Boise, she handed over control of the event, and now lives what she describes as a quiet life in Evansville, which she says is "a lovely peaceful little town down by the Ohio River".

Audain turns 65 in November. "I'm still fortunate enough to be able to get out each day and run four or five miles. Fingers crossed. For my age and the amount of miles I've got on my body I'm doing really well. I'm a lot slower, but I don't really care."