1972 New Zealand eight

The team put up an impressive performance, beat the highly favoured East German eight, and became European champion; at the time the win was regarded as holding world championship status.

Despite a shoe-string budget, financial constraints, and all rowers working part-time, the 1971 success was repeated and the team won Olympic gold in Munich.

The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Avery Brundage, was a zealous advocate of amateurism; he was so impressed by the New Zealand performance that he insisted on handing out the gold medals himself.

There were expectations for the New Zealand eight to win a medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, but the team came fourth and this was regarded as a failure.

At the time, the eight was seen as the most important boat class, and three from the Mexico eight trained for the 1970 world championships: Wybo Veldman, John Hunter, and Gil Cawood.

The team did not gel, and Watkinson's selection became regarded as a mistake; as a single sculler, he had become used to "doing his thing in his own time".

[2] The officials at the time were Rusty Robertson as coach, Don Rowlands as manager, fund-raiser and organiser, and Fred Strachan as strategist.

The three were replaced by three developing rowers—Lindsay Wilson, Joe Earl, and Trevor Coker—and they were teamed with the other young rower, Gary Robertson, to form the bow of the boat.

Although coached by Strachan at St. Andrew's College in Christchurch and known to all but one of the selectors, Earl himself doubted that he would have been chosen ahead of more experienced oarsmen.

He was replaced by Hurt who, although from a sculling background and, at 183 centimetres (6 ft 0 in) and 83 kilograms (13.1 st) small for a rower, worked out well for the team.

In the semi-final, New Zealand faced the Soviet Union, the team that had narrowly beaten them for second place at the 1970 World Championships.

[4][10][11] The race strategy for the Danish final, where the New Zealand eight would meet the favourites East Germany for the first time, was simple: sprint for the first 500 metres and then somehow hang on to win.

Whilst there was an expectation that the crew would stay together, Gary Robertson was personally uncertain of his place and believed that Storey would take his seat.

[20] One of Strachan's first tasks was to unite the rowing fraternity at their annual general meeting behind the plan to send an eight to the Olympics.

To keep costs down, Strachan organised for the rowers to stay in the Bavarian town of Lenggries, about an hour's drive away from the Munich regatta course.

Whilst there were no dedicated rowing facilities in Lenggries, the Sylvenstein Reservoir provided good training opportunities.

At the next regatta in Hanover, the Americans were beaten by a two–second margin, and the next day the New Zealanders beat the Australian team (second at the 1968 Olympics).

Whilst doctors had advised against travel due to a weak heart, his parents went nonetheless and his father died when they were in Italy.

The German media soon wrote about the partying New Zealanders, and this evoked a discussion in West Germany how it could be possible for those larrikins to "beat our boys?

In the end, it came to a photo finish, with the United States declared silver medallist, 0.06 seconds ahead of East Germany.

The New Zealand Olympic liaison officer, Hans Lennarz, is credited with having organised this, and it contributed to the emotion of the occasion.

[33] Collinge was the only one who knew that the new anthem would be played, as he had by chance been in the main stadium when the German army band rehearsed it, but he had chosen not to tell anyone about it.

[34] It is often reported that this was the first time that "God Defend New Zealand" was played at the Olympics,[4][31][35][36] even by the book written about the new anthem,[37] but this is incorrect.

For reasons unknown, both anthems had been performed 20 years earlier—one after the other—in Helsinki at the medal ceremony for Yvette Williams' victory in the 1952 long jump.

This provided the opportunity to get to know other rowers on a social basis, and the East Germans invited the other medallists to a garden party at their apartment in the Olympic Village.

It was gazetted as the country's second national anthem on 21 November 1977, on equal standing with "God Save the Queen".

[46] Rowlands, the manager for the 1972 team, was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1973 New Year Honours for services to rowing.

The citation reads in part:[32] Their win, their manner in achieving it and their laid-bare emotion on the victory dais when God Defend New Zealand was played at their Olympic victory ceremony was a seminal moment in New Zealand sport, one of those moments which for years later people can recall as if it was yesterday.Their coach, Rusty Robertson, and their manager, Don Rowlands, were also inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The German sports journalist Karl-Heinrich von Groddeck, himself a rower at three Olympic Games, was asked to compile a list of the ten best coxed eight crews of all times.

The most recent to die was Dickie in December 2017 amidst the team organising a reunion in conjunction with the next Halberg Awards presentation.