With the 2012 London Olympics just around the corner, we thought we would look back at some of our favourite Olympic moments. Today, Ron Palenski, author and New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame chief executive, looks at Murray Halberg's 5000m win at the 1960 Rome Games.
I didn't see it in the flesh, but I still see it in the replays of the mind: the splendour that was Rome, Murray Halberg winning the 5000m at the Olympics in 1960.
His break from the field with four laps to go was bold, but that was how he had won the three miles at the Empire Games in Cardiff two years earlier.
And hadn't he been inspired 30 minutes before by Peter Snell winning the 800m? Hadn't he come to Rome after Cardiff and run the final in his mind's eye two years before anyone else?
Snell burst on an unsuspecting world. But Halberg was suspected. The German, Hans Grodotzki, and the Pole, Kazimierz Zimny, knew how good he was. They knew he was not the greatest runner to grace a track, but they knew his determination. There must be words for "gritty" in German and Polish.
When Halberg went, the German and the Pole should have gone, too. But they didn't.
They couldn't. The gap opened.
Halberg's task was simple: stay away until the end. He ran and ran; they chased and chased.
Three laps, two laps, the bell.
Someone bellowing out, "Go Muzz! Go Muzz!" could be heard above the crowd's roar. And go he went, until he could go no more.
The gap narrowed, but not enough. Halberg clutched at the white tape, the old athletics signal of victory, as he crossed the line, his body spent his mission accomplished.
