Gold to Moss Burmester on opening night at the Commonwealth Games pool will inspire the whole New Zealand swim team, coach Jan Cameron says.
"That swim was inspirational," Cameron said.
"I think you saw that from the haka that they did afterwards, the emotion and the thrill in the camp.
"That was mission accomplished tonight, but we've got other people who are up for medals and we're going after them."
Burmester, 24, shot away from the gun open an uncatchable lead on Australians Travis Nederpelt and Joshua Krogh. Nederpelt rattled home for the silver, much too late.
One Australian coach told Cameron they had expected Burmester to fade, as he had in past races at elite level.
But Burmester did not fade, even though he was hurting. Hours and hours of hard work had built his strength to the point where he was capable of blasting out hard and holding on.
The arena was transformed into Godzone when Burmester embarked on his victory march.
He had taken only a few steps when he was confronted by the swim team haka party.
Burmester stood transfixed, victory bouquet in his hand, gold medal around his neck, as he was honoured.
"The haka that those guys did was just amazing, it was the best haka I've ever seen," Burmester said.
"All I wanted to do was join in with them. I hope it fires them up as much as it did me."
The haka was applauded by the crowd at the pool, and did provide immediate inspiration to swimmers -- though not New Zealand ones.
Lead-off swimmer in the winning South African 4 x 100m relay team Roland Schoeman said they drew inspiration from the haka.
"We were really motivated before the race listening to the New Zealand team doing the haka, it gave us all goosebumps and our captain was saying we're going to have to come up with something like that."
- NZPA
