Celebrating 100 years of the New Zealand Olympic Team

In July 2021, New Zealand took a record 222 athletes to the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The team came home celebrating its most successful Olympic Games ever, with a haul of seven gold, six silver and seven bronze medals - an all-time high of 20 in total.

New Zealand finished up an impressive 13th on the table, in which a total of 86 teams won medals. Placing in 11 sports, a quarter of New Zealand’s athletes took home gold, silver or bronze. To celebrate the impending Games and the 100th anniversary of the first New Zealand Team, in October 2020 NZ Post issued a set of six stamps and a range of complementary collectables. With a backdrop of design elements from the New Zealand Olympic Committee’s brand campaign, these stamps featured Japanese-inspired ink-wash paintings of athletes in motion. While the figures were unnamed on the stamps, they were based on six Olympic hopefuls. Eddie Osei-Nketia Born across the Tasman, Eddie Osei-Nketia could have chosen to represent either New Zealand or Australia. Wanting to follow in the footsteps of his champion sprinter father Gus Nketia, he chose the black-and-white uniform. Tyla Nathan-Wong One of the most talked-about events for New Zealand was the Black Ferns’ performance in the women’s Rugby Sevens. The team took gold after some nail-biting games and memorable post-match interviews from team members Ruby Tui and Michaela Blyde. Tyla Nathan-Wong scored a try and six points from the conversions during the final against France.

Disappointingly, OseiNketia was outside the automatic qualification standard of 10.05 seconds for the 100-metre event, and was not selected by the New Zealand Olympic Committee to compete. Nathan Wong is now an Olympic gold and silver medallist, having competed for silver at Rio 2016. In 2019 she was named the New Zealand Rugby Sevens Player of the Year.

Ella Williams Ella Williams made her Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, placing ninth in her category. Tokyo aimed to capture a younger audience with six new sports: surfing, softball, baseball, sport climbing, skateboarding and karate.

A surfer since age four, Williams remains the only New Zealand surfer to have won the women’s world junior championship title.

Kane Russell Kane Russell attended his second Olympic Games after making his Olympic debut at Rio 2016. He and his team won silver at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The Black Sticks were put out of the running after a loss to Argentina in their last pool match, in which Russell scored New Zealand’s first and only goal.

Eliza McCartney Pole vaulter Eliza McCartney was an ingenue on the international scene when she won the bronze medal at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. She went on to take silver at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. McCartney was sadly unable to make it to Tokyo 2020 as she continued to deal with challenging injuries. Jacko Gill Jacko Gill has been competing on the international stage since 2009. In 2010 he made waves after winning gold in the shot put at the World Junior Championships. At the age of 15 years and 213 days, this made him the youngest-ever male gold medallist at the competition.

Gill made his Summer Olympic Games debut at Rio 2016. At Tokyo 2020 Gill made it through to the shot put final in his category, finishing ninth. Team mate Tom Walsh took out the bronze medal for New Zealand.