KEY POINTS:
Super Saturday, indeed, with two Olympic golds and a supersized bag of other coloured medals. But was it the greatest day for New Zealand at an Olympic Games?
For four thrilling hours, New Zealand were winning a medal an hour - a rowing gold to the resurgent Evers-Swindell twins and two bronzes at Shunyi, and a Hayden Roulston silver at the Laoshan Velodrome.
There was just time to draw breath before shot putter Valerie Vili put on her meanest game face, stepped into the Bird's Nest and won the first New Zealand athletics gold in 32 years, when 1500m runner John Walker staved off all comers in the straight at Montreal.
And so the number of medals New Zealand won at Athens in 2004 had been equalled in a flash, and the meagre catch from Sydney 2000 exceeded.
Never before has New Zealand won five Olympic medals in one day, and only five times have there been two golds on the same date. On Super Saturday, those rare feats both came to pass.
Beijing, August 16, 2008, has only one rival for historical greatness: Rome, September 22, 1960, when two black singlets breasted the tape in Rome's Olympic Stadium within minutes of each other.
First, Peter Snell came from obscurity to win the 800m, then Murray Halberg ran a brilliant tactical race to win the 5000m on the same afternoon.
Snell sent shock waves through world athletics. He was an international novice who had raced overseas only once. His world ranking coming to Rome was 26th.
Leaving Rome, he was No 1, after dive bombing world record holder Roger Moens of Belgium to win in an Olympic record one minute 46.3 seconds.
"Who won?" the dazed Snell asked Moens.
"You did," a disbelieving Moens replied.
Snell did not know how Olympic gold medalists were meant to react. He did not run a victory lap, instead staying trackside to cheer on training partner Halberg, also coached by Arthur Lydiard.
Halberg, who had a withered left arm and shoulder after a rugby injury, won the 5000m with a run labelled "probably the most courageous run in Olympic history" by Australian running great Ron Clarke.
With three laps to run, a time when most runners were conserving their effort for a last lap sprint, Halberg struck out alone, as if the finish was just around the curve.
Baffled, his rivals hesitated, wondering if the New Zealander had miscounted the laps. By then Halberg had a 20-metre lead, and was hammering it for home.
Though the field came hard after Halberg as he tired in the last 400m, he held on to win by seven metres, collapsing on the infield with the finishing tape tangled around his body.
"I had always imagined an Olympic champion was something more than a mere mortal, in fact a god," Halberg said in his autobiography.
"Now I knew he was just a human being."
A half century on from Beijing, Vili and the Evers-Swindell twins will have developed a mythology of their own, akin to that of Snell and Halberg.
Both have tales to tell. Vili, the shy teenager who lost both parents young and in Kirsten Hellier found both a surrogate parent, and a coach who took her to world and Olympic titles.
And Hawke's Bay twins Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, who ruled world rowing for three seasons and won Olympic gold in 2004, only to lose their form so dramatically just before Beijing that they could not make a World Cup final.
Written off coming into the regatta, then again when trailing the Germans by nearly two seconds with 500m to row, they rallied to win on the line, in a finish so close they were called in second, until the photo finish revealed they were now dual Olympic Games champions.
Now, there's a couple of stories that are going to sound great in 50 years' time.
Until then Snell and Halberg stay on the top of podium.
- NZPA
