June 27, 2026 • 12 mins
Author and famed sports historian Joseph Romanos knows his way around New Zealand's top Olympic athletes - and he's ranked them in his new book.
Our Olympic Legends ranks New Zealand’s top 50 Olympians, from the 1900s to the high points of the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.
Romanos joined Piney to explain further.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport Podcast with Jason Vine
from Newstalk zb.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Osif Romanos has spent a lifetime writing about New Zealand sport.
He has attended ten Olympic Games, interviewed athletes from every
New Zealand Olympic team dating back to nineteen twenty, and
written more than fifty five oh books. His latest work,
Our Olympic Legends, profiles fifty of New Zealand's greatest Olympians
(00:34):
and attempts the almost impossible task of ranking them. The
book spans more than a century of Olympic history, from
water polo pioneer Victor Lindbergh in nineteen hundred through to
modern stars like Zoey Sadowski. Senate Joseph Romanos is with
us congratulations on another great book. Joseph, What inspired you
(00:56):
to take on the challenge of not only identifying New
Zealand's fifty greatest Olympic legends but then ranking them?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Arguments with my friends Jason were you know, we were
all pushing for who was the greatest and who was
next and so on, and there was a lot of disagreement,
and I thought, well it might be interesting, and then
I got caught up in a bit in the end.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So it was always going to be a ranking book.
You weren't just putting together the fifty best and letting
the readers decide. You were always keen on ranking them yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think it's a bit edg year if you give
your own opinion. I mean people can disagree and that's fine,
but yeah, I just think it adds a dimension to it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
You used four criteria quality of performance, quality of opposition,
longevity and impact on the New Zealand public. So how
did you go about balancing out all of those factors
and putting each athlete or team through the filter of
all four of those things.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Well, I think quality of performance is obviously critical. I
mean you have to have done well, very well to
be a legend, don't you. And then I I always
feel it's great to do it once, but if you
can go back and do it again and again, that's
another aspect. Again, that's fantastic. The impact on New Zealand's interesting.
(02:19):
I think of the rowing eight that won in nineteen
seventy two, big impact on New Zealand. It was more
than just a gold medal, really, and Jack Lovelot winning
was to say he only won one race, really, but
it was a race that you know will live forever.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
How often did you move athletes up and down the list?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh, there was a nightmare. I mean, there's really thirty
people I think you should be in the top ten.
It was a nightmare. It's infantasmal and in the end,
it's very subjective and I talked to a few of
my friends about it, but it didn't help much because
no one agrees.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Did you find yourself, I don't know, favoring athletes who
you had seen perform firsthand, that you'd seen close up
in the flesh.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
No, I don't think so, No, I really don't. I
mean the tendency from a lot of people, I suppose
is to rank the modern ones higher and the ones
that you don't you know, don't know much about their lower.
But I've read a lot of Olympic history. It's a
real passion in mine, Jason, and I feel like I
know the early people as well as I need to
(03:24):
know them really, so I feel like I've rated them fairly.
I don't think they've I don't think they've suffered because
they were earlier.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
When you submitted the final list of fifty and it
went off and you know there's the point of no
return the books in print. Did you didn't wake up
in the middle of the night or or have this
this you know, this horrible feeling shivers I've got I've
got these two around the wrong way or anything like that.
You were at peace with your fifty.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yes and no. I mean you know, you could make
strong cases for lots to be reversed. I mean, hamous
Cure winning a high junt gold medal is just fantastic
in the Olympics, and he's a long way down the list. Really,
it's just that the people above them are fantastic as well.
You're always going to go, oh, there's not enough people
in the top few.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Dame Lisa Carrington is number one, Peter Snell is number two,
Daniel Loder is number three. Were they all pretty easy
picks as your podium or not?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Well, they were easy for me, those three in that
order actually, But then you know, iran to people who
I think no sport pretty well and they were saying
Snell has got to be number one and where's Lovelock
and you know, they seem quite clear cut to me,
but other people haven't seen the light, Jason.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, no, no, once they read the book, maybe they will. Obviously,
Dame Lisa's if you look at the criteria you use,
the longevity of her success obviously is what stands out
to me.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah. Also that the eight gold medals isn't to be
dismissed lightly. That's more than double anyone else. And also
I really liked it. She won on her own, and
then she won she started forming teams and winning in teams,
so she's carrying the whole team.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
How did you manage to compare olympians from different errors
when things like training methods, professionalism, competition levels and such
like have changed so dramatically.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I don't think you can. I don't think you can
go overboard about professionalism and amateurism. There's no doubt about it.
I mean they can compete all year around and train
all year around and not worry about going to work.
So that's a huge advantage. But now I think in
Peter Snell winning all his gold medals and work setting
world records and studying all the time to be a
(05:46):
quantity surveyor, so, I mean, you know a lot of
it's just your will and you drive.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
If those who read it have a different view from yours,
disagree with the places of some of them or the
order in which you've put them. Would you consider that
a sign that the book has done its job if
it causes robust debate.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, I hope people read it and enjoy the stories
about each one of them. And no one will think
this is they're fifty in this order. That'll be impossible.
But you know, as long as they can see my
logic for putting things in that order, that's fine. They
don't have to agree with it, but as long as
they can see there's some some sense behind it.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Looking across all the athletes you researched and have watched
represent US at Olympic Games, what common traits the New
Zealand's greatest Olympians share.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
They're very proud, proud to represent represent New Zealand. It's
a small country. I mean, Daniel Lodis said this when
he was winning his gold medals. He was thinking, I'm
just a little guy from Dunedin doing this in front
of the world, and I thought, yeah, that's that's New Zealand. Really,
they get out there and they overachieve, and I think
it's there's very few New Zealanders who are such superstars
(07:00):
that they're not they're not overachieving when they're in the Olympics.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Are there any athletes, our Olympic athletes who you believe
modern New Zealanders don't appreciate simply because a lot of
what they did, In fact, all of what they did
happened before some of us were alive, before we were
able to watch other athletes from the past who we
don't fully appreciate.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Now, yeah, it's quite interesting that. I mean, I read
a lot of Olympic history, but I realized not everyone
does because I've been talking to some people and they said, well,
what why is Pirate in there? Pirates? And I said, well,
he won one hundred meter sprint bronze medal and no
one's got even close to doing that since and that
is the most competitive race in the Olympics, the one
(07:42):
hundred meters. And these people were going, well, I didn't
know that, I'd never heard of him and all this,
and so it did get me thinking Ted Morgan won
a boxing gold medal for New Zealand with a broken hand.
I mean, there are great stories about people in the
past who I'm sure today's sports followers may not know
at all.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Do we have many underrated Olympians? Are they're underrated olympians
in this.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah? I think yes, And there's a lot in the
on At the end of the book, I do another
sixty or so honorable mentions. I just do a paragraph
or two on each one of them, and a lot
of them are just great as well. You know, some
of the rowers and that I have won medals over
the years have just been terrific and it was hard
(08:30):
not to put them all in the top fifty. But
everyone can't get in the top fifty. I think we've
we've achieved a massive amount in rowing, and I think
because we've done so well, it tends to be it
just goes into a big pot now and people don't
differentiate well enough how each performance, how good each performance.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Is anybody who missed the top fifty who you thought
really should be in there? I mean it's to say
you got another sixty odd at the end, so you've
covered your bases there. But I mean, was it hard
to you mentioned the top thirty being hard? Was it
also hard to get people into the fifty who were
maybe just bubbling under?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Well? I made a decision. In the end, I was
going to put every person who's won to go medal
for New Zealand in an individual event, so not a
team or or not a pair or a four. I
was going to put them in if they want an
individual gold medal, like board sailing or something like that.
So that was I think there was twenty nine and
so once I made that decision, then I found that
the people some people I really wanted in there, like
(09:24):
Maurice Chamberlin, our first female track medalist, Rod Dixon, you know,
a fifteen hundred meter medalist and did very well in
the marathon and had that great five thousand meter final.
I mean, these sort of people weren't in my top
fifty in the end, and I was Barry McGee, a
marathon bronze medalist. I was hurting missing them out. It
(09:44):
was really hurting. So there were another team and I
expected when I started this project, I expected they'd be
in the top fifty in the end. They missed out.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
This is a book about our Olympic legends, the people.
Do you have a view on what our best ever
Olympic moment is?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
That's a good question. I think that rowing eight was
big Lovelock would have been the biggest if he'd done
exactly what he did in today's era that they thought
that was the greatest fifteen hundred meter field ever assembled.
At the time, it was a very contentious Olympics because
it was the Nazi Olympics. He set a world record
(10:26):
and he won it in the style that people didn't
run in those days. He took off with four ndred
meters to go and held his pace all the way
to the tape. If he had done that in the
modern era, with all today's publicity, that would have been
the biggest moment of all. As it was, it made
him our athlete, his New Zealand's most famous sportsman of
that whole era. Just that, But imagine that the impact
(10:47):
he would have had today. But yeah, I think the
rowers doing that, and also Daniel loaded two swimming gold medals.
Swimming is very big, and to win two freestyle swimming
gold medals individual events at an Olympics that was that
was pretty big. I think that stopped the world.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
You were there on Atlanta, weren't you in ninety six
when he did that. Yeah, you've attended ten darting back.
I think to soul nineteen eighty eight. So will Daniel
be the greatest performance you've seen in person?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Well, yeah, if you look at the book, you'd say that.
But you know, I mean, I was very admiring of
Sarah Olmer when she won that gold medal in two
thousand and four. She said a world record. Seemed to
be every time she went out to write, she said,
a world record. She won the final by miles, and
that's an event that they usually win by hundreds of
a second. And end of it when they had the
(11:41):
press conference, answer was those other two that she beat,
who are legends of their sport. They were just just
saying this, she's something exceptional and proud to be on
the podium with her, you know, I mean, it just
made me think what standing she's got.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, it's another great book, Joseph, just the latest and
a long line of great books. I did feel honored
that you asked me. I don't think you were asking
my opinion. We talked about this book as you were
putting it together. I'm not sure that you actually formally
asked my opinion. I did think Snell would be number one.
I think you said to me, you know, who do
you think number one is, and I said, Snell, and
then you talked about Dame Lisa, and you obviously convinced me.
(12:17):
And not that my opinion would have changed the book anyway,
but I think it's a great book. It's one to
leaf through and to enjoy. So congratulations on adding another
one to your ever expanding library.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Thank you, Jason, Thank you Joseph.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Joseph Romanos, author of Our Olympic Legends, profiling and ranking
New Zealand's greatest Olympias.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to News Talk said Be weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Weekend Sport Podcast with Jason Vine
from Newstalk zb.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Osif Romanos has spent a lifetime writing about New Zealand sport.
He has attended ten Olympic Games, interviewed athletes from every
New Zealand Olympic team dating back to nineteen twenty, and
written more than fifty five oh books. His latest work,
Our Olympic Legends, profiles fifty of New Zealand's greatest Olympians
(00:34):
and attempts the almost impossible task of ranking them. The
book spans more than a century of Olympic history, from
water polo pioneer Victor Lindbergh in nineteen hundred through to
modern stars like Zoey Sadowski. Senate Joseph Romanos is with
us congratulations on another great book. Joseph, What inspired you
(00:56):
to take on the challenge of not only identifying New
Zealand's fifty greatest Olympic legends but then ranking them?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Arguments with my friends Jason were you know, we were
all pushing for who was the greatest and who was
next and so on, and there was a lot of disagreement,
and I thought, well it might be interesting, and then
I got caught up in a bit in the end.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So it was always going to be a ranking book.
You weren't just putting together the fifty best and letting
the readers decide. You were always keen on ranking them yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think it's a bit edg year if you give
your own opinion. I mean people can disagree and that's fine,
but yeah, I just think it adds a dimension to it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
You used four criteria quality of performance, quality of opposition,
longevity and impact on the New Zealand public. So how
did you go about balancing out all of those factors
and putting each athlete or team through the filter of
all four of those things.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Well, I think quality of performance is obviously critical. I
mean you have to have done well, very well to
be a legend, don't you. And then I I always
feel it's great to do it once, but if you
can go back and do it again and again, that's
another aspect. Again, that's fantastic. The impact on New Zealand's interesting.
(02:19):
I think of the rowing eight that won in nineteen
seventy two, big impact on New Zealand. It was more
than just a gold medal, really, and Jack Lovelot winning
was to say he only won one race, really, but
it was a race that you know will live forever.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
How often did you move athletes up and down the list?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh, there was a nightmare. I mean, there's really thirty
people I think you should be in the top ten.
It was a nightmare. It's infantasmal and in the end,
it's very subjective and I talked to a few of
my friends about it, but it didn't help much because
no one agrees.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Did you find yourself, I don't know, favoring athletes who
you had seen perform firsthand, that you'd seen close up
in the flesh.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
No, I don't think so, No, I really don't. I
mean the tendency from a lot of people, I suppose
is to rank the modern ones higher and the ones
that you don't you know, don't know much about their lower.
But I've read a lot of Olympic history. It's a
real passion in mine, Jason, and I feel like I
know the early people as well as I need to
(03:24):
know them really, so I feel like I've rated them fairly.
I don't think they've I don't think they've suffered because
they were earlier.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
When you submitted the final list of fifty and it
went off and you know there's the point of no
return the books in print. Did you didn't wake up
in the middle of the night or or have this
this you know, this horrible feeling shivers I've got I've
got these two around the wrong way or anything like that.
You were at peace with your fifty.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yes and no. I mean you know, you could make
strong cases for lots to be reversed. I mean, hamous
Cure winning a high junt gold medal is just fantastic
in the Olympics, and he's a long way down the list. Really,
it's just that the people above them are fantastic as well.
You're always going to go, oh, there's not enough people
in the top few.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Dame Lisa Carrington is number one, Peter Snell is number two,
Daniel Loder is number three. Were they all pretty easy
picks as your podium or not?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Well, they were easy for me, those three in that
order actually, But then you know, iran to people who
I think no sport pretty well and they were saying
Snell has got to be number one and where's Lovelock
and you know, they seem quite clear cut to me,
but other people haven't seen the light, Jason.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, no, no, once they read the book, maybe they will. Obviously,
Dame Lisa's if you look at the criteria you use,
the longevity of her success obviously is what stands out
to me.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah. Also that the eight gold medals isn't to be
dismissed lightly. That's more than double anyone else. And also
I really liked it. She won on her own, and
then she won she started forming teams and winning in teams,
so she's carrying the whole team.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
How did you manage to compare olympians from different errors
when things like training methods, professionalism, competition levels and such
like have changed so dramatically.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I don't think you can. I don't think you can
go overboard about professionalism and amateurism. There's no doubt about it.
I mean they can compete all year around and train
all year around and not worry about going to work.
So that's a huge advantage. But now I think in
Peter Snell winning all his gold medals and work setting
world records and studying all the time to be a
(05:46):
quantity surveyor, so, I mean, you know a lot of
it's just your will and you drive.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
If those who read it have a different view from yours,
disagree with the places of some of them or the
order in which you've put them. Would you consider that
a sign that the book has done its job if
it causes robust debate.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, I hope people read it and enjoy the stories
about each one of them. And no one will think
this is they're fifty in this order. That'll be impossible.
But you know, as long as they can see my
logic for putting things in that order, that's fine. They
don't have to agree with it, but as long as
they can see there's some some sense behind it.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Looking across all the athletes you researched and have watched
represent US at Olympic Games, what common traits the New
Zealand's greatest Olympians share.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
They're very proud, proud to represent represent New Zealand. It's
a small country. I mean, Daniel Lodis said this when
he was winning his gold medals. He was thinking, I'm
just a little guy from Dunedin doing this in front
of the world, and I thought, yeah, that's that's New Zealand. Really,
they get out there and they overachieve, and I think
it's there's very few New Zealanders who are such superstars
(07:00):
that they're not they're not overachieving when they're in the Olympics.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Are there any athletes, our Olympic athletes who you believe
modern New Zealanders don't appreciate simply because a lot of
what they did, In fact, all of what they did
happened before some of us were alive, before we were
able to watch other athletes from the past who we
don't fully appreciate.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Now, yeah, it's quite interesting that. I mean, I read
a lot of Olympic history, but I realized not everyone
does because I've been talking to some people and they said, well,
what why is Pirate in there? Pirates? And I said, well,
he won one hundred meter sprint bronze medal and no
one's got even close to doing that since and that
is the most competitive race in the Olympics, the one
(07:42):
hundred meters. And these people were going, well, I didn't
know that, I'd never heard of him and all this,
and so it did get me thinking Ted Morgan won
a boxing gold medal for New Zealand with a broken hand.
I mean, there are great stories about people in the
past who I'm sure today's sports followers may not know
at all.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Do we have many underrated Olympians? Are they're underrated olympians
in this.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah? I think yes, And there's a lot in the
on At the end of the book, I do another
sixty or so honorable mentions. I just do a paragraph
or two on each one of them, and a lot
of them are just great as well. You know, some
of the rowers and that I have won medals over
the years have just been terrific and it was hard
(08:30):
not to put them all in the top fifty. But
everyone can't get in the top fifty. I think we've
we've achieved a massive amount in rowing, and I think
because we've done so well, it tends to be it
just goes into a big pot now and people don't
differentiate well enough how each performance, how good each performance.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Is anybody who missed the top fifty who you thought
really should be in there? I mean it's to say
you got another sixty odd at the end, so you've
covered your bases there. But I mean, was it hard
to you mentioned the top thirty being hard? Was it
also hard to get people into the fifty who were
maybe just bubbling under?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Well? I made a decision. In the end, I was
going to put every person who's won to go medal
for New Zealand in an individual event, so not a
team or or not a pair or a four. I
was going to put them in if they want an
individual gold medal, like board sailing or something like that.
So that was I think there was twenty nine and
so once I made that decision, then I found that
the people some people I really wanted in there, like
(09:24):
Maurice Chamberlin, our first female track medalist, Rod Dixon, you know,
a fifteen hundred meter medalist and did very well in
the marathon and had that great five thousand meter final.
I mean, these sort of people weren't in my top
fifty in the end, and I was Barry McGee, a
marathon bronze medalist. I was hurting missing them out. It
(09:44):
was really hurting. So there were another team and I
expected when I started this project, I expected they'd be
in the top fifty in the end. They missed out.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
This is a book about our Olympic legends, the people.
Do you have a view on what our best ever
Olympic moment is?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
That's a good question. I think that rowing eight was
big Lovelock would have been the biggest if he'd done
exactly what he did in today's era that they thought
that was the greatest fifteen hundred meter field ever assembled.
At the time, it was a very contentious Olympics because
it was the Nazi Olympics. He set a world record
(10:26):
and he won it in the style that people didn't
run in those days. He took off with four ndred
meters to go and held his pace all the way
to the tape. If he had done that in the
modern era, with all today's publicity, that would have been
the biggest moment of all. As it was, it made
him our athlete, his New Zealand's most famous sportsman of
that whole era. Just that, But imagine that the impact
(10:47):
he would have had today. But yeah, I think the
rowers doing that, and also Daniel loaded two swimming gold medals.
Swimming is very big, and to win two freestyle swimming
gold medals individual events at an Olympics that was that
was pretty big. I think that stopped the world.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
You were there on Atlanta, weren't you in ninety six
when he did that. Yeah, you've attended ten darting back.
I think to soul nineteen eighty eight. So will Daniel
be the greatest performance you've seen in person?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Well, yeah, if you look at the book, you'd say that.
But you know, I mean, I was very admiring of
Sarah Olmer when she won that gold medal in two
thousand and four. She said a world record. Seemed to
be every time she went out to write, she said,
a world record. She won the final by miles, and
that's an event that they usually win by hundreds of
a second. And end of it when they had the
(11:41):
press conference, answer was those other two that she beat,
who are legends of their sport. They were just just
saying this, she's something exceptional and proud to be on
the podium with her, you know, I mean, it just
made me think what standing she's got.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Well, it's another great book, Joseph, just the latest and
a long line of great books. I did feel honored
that you asked me. I don't think you were asking
my opinion. We talked about this book as you were
putting it together. I'm not sure that you actually formally
asked my opinion. I did think Snell would be number one.
I think you said to me, you know, who do
you think number one is, and I said, Snell, and
then you talked about Dame Lisa, and you obviously convinced me.
(12:17):
And not that my opinion would have changed the book anyway,
but I think it's a great book. It's one to
leaf through and to enjoy. So congratulations on adding another
one to your ever expanding library.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Thank you, Jason, Thank you Joseph.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Joseph Romanos, author of Our Olympic Legends, profiling and ranking
New Zealand's greatest Olympias.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to News Talk said Be weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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