Words: Cherie Howie
Design: Paul Slater

The 32nd Summer Olympics begin in Tokyo today, with more than 200 Kiwi athletes chasing gold medal glory over the next two weeks.

Seventy-one Kiwis have climbed the winner’s dais before them, their names written into New Zealand sporting history.

But what’s become of the gold medals they once so proudly received?

A gold medal rested against his sternum, a silver fern over his heart.

It was late in the day at Sagami Bay, south of Tokyo, and Earle Wells — alongside his Flying Dutchman helmsman Helmer Pedersen — had just been given the Olympic gold medal in his sailing class at the 1964 Olympics.

On the front of this most coveted of sporting accolades, the goddess of victory clutched a winner’s crown in her right hand, raising it to the sky.

To her left, our national emblem threaded across the left breast pocket of Wells’ black New Zealand team blazer to rest above the champion sailor’s heart.

Despite the occasion, a culmination of years of toil on and off the water, it kept a steady beat.

“It takes a fair amount to get me ruffled”, says Wells of his thoughts on the dais almost 60 years ago.

These days the 88-year-old’s Olympic gold medal lies mostly “in a drawer somewhere” at his rural North Island home.

“And it’s a bit heavy to wear in your breast pocket,” Wells says of the medal made of gilt silver and six grams of fine gold, the mis-spelt “yochting” on its front.

Some know he’s an Olympic champion.

Like so many Olympic golds awarded to Kiwi athletes over the last 109 years, Wells’ has done the rounds at various schools.

Others have heard about his place in Olympic history, mostly friends and those involved in the deer farming industry to which he devoted his later working years.

Plenty more don’t know.

But he’s always happy to share when someone asks to see his gold medal, Wells says.

After all, there aren’t too many about.

Athletes competing for New Zealand have won 46 gold medals at 18 summer Olympic Games since boxer Ted Morgan triumphed in the welterweight division in 1928.

There’s also our first Olympic champion, the appropriately named swimmer Malcolm Champion, who won gold alongside three Australians as part of the Australasia 4x200m freestyle relay team in 1912.

Multi-athlete sports such as rowing and hockey mean Wells is one of 71 Kiwi athletes to earn that most alluring of metal discs once described by celebrated American wrestler Dan Gable as “not really made of gold”.

“They’re made of sweat, determination and a hard-to-find alloy called guts”, said Gable, a 1972 Olympic wrestling champion.

It can be an elusive combination.

So can, in some cases, its reward — among them some golds won by Kiwi athletes over 11 decades of Olympic triumph.

On the eve of another Tokyo Olympics the Herald has tried to find the 90 Olympic golds won by our athletes since Champion’s first in 1912.

Our treasure hunt’s led us around the country and the world to schools, club rooms, museums, vaults and, mostly, family homes.

Many an Olympic gold medal now spends most of its life stashed alongside socks or smalls, or tucked away in wardrobes and attics.

Others, often thanks to the efforts of proud family, hang openly in display cabinets.

Several have been lost or stolen, in most cases later found or returned — one swiped gold medal made its way back to its relieved owner after being poked under a provincial court house door.

Others escaped property-threatening bush fires or errant inclusion in Salvation Army-bound bags of clothing.

The whereabouts of at least two — Champion’s included — are unknown.

“That’s sad,” Wells says.

Ours is a small country with some big sporting triumphs, but the number of Kiwis who’ve stood on a podium as an Olympic gold medal’s placed around their neck is tiny.

Each is a treasure.

“There’s only five million of us, so there’s not a hell of a lot of them around — which is a good thing”, Wells says.

“If it was easy to get, it wouldn’t be so special.”

Missing: The mystery of our first gold medal

It’s a beautiful medal, 33mm in diameter, made of gold and gilt silver and was given to its winner by King Gustaf V of Sweden.

On the front, two female figures place a laurel crown on the head of a victorious athlete. On the back, a herald proclaiming the opening of the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games stands alongside a statue of the host country’s physical education pioneer Per Henrik Ling.

Kiwi swimmer Malcolm Champion won it — the first Olympic gold for a New Zealand athlete — as part of the Australasia 4x200m freestyle relay swimming team.

But where is it?

“It’s a great mystery,” says Champion’s great-nephew Miles Dillon.

The medal certainly made it to New Zealand.

When Champion disembarked the Athenic in Wellington in September 1912 a Dominion reporter noted the “handsome gold medal”, as the returning swimmer expressed his distaste for how the Stockholm Games were “run on class lines”.

“The King of Sweden was there, he presented me with my medal,” Champion told the reporter.

“The Crown Prince, and many of the Swedish, Norwegian and German nobility [were there too], but the great mass of the people did not appear to have been appealed to, and were not there.”

His dad always believed his own mother and an aunt, Champion’s sisters, gave the medal to Auckland War Memorial Museum, Dillon says.

But inquiries by an Auckland Tepid Baths staffer, where Champion had worked as a custodian, called that into doubt.

“When they redid the Teps, she called the museum, but they had no record of the medal.”

That’s still the case, a museum spokeswoman says.

“Nothing comes up in our records relating to Malcolm Champion, not even a person record, so certainly no Olympic medal.”

Inquiries with both Swimming Auckland and Swimming New Zealand also turned up no clues.

Dillon never bought the family lore about Champion’s gold ending up in a museum after his 1939 death.

“I suspect it may have gone with his daughter.”

Norfolk Island-born Champion, a descendant of Bounty mutineer Matthew Quintal, moved to Auckland aged 14 in 1897. He had one daughter, Edna.

She later moved to Sydney, married and also had one daughter, Lola.

Lola gave Champion’s Olympics participation medal to her son, Richard Meikle, but the Sydneysider — Champion’s only great-grandchild — has no idea of the gold’s whereabouts.

He wonders if the reward for prolific top finisher Champion’s greatest win has simply been hidden too well.

“Something so valuable, people do that. They might’ve forgotten the hiding place.

“[But] there’s a fair bit of history to the story of my great-grandfather’s gold medal, and we’d love to have possession of it.”

From shoebox under the bed to public display

It came in a velvet box and, for many years, lived in a shoe box.

Dame Yvette Corlett (nee Williams) was the first female New Zealand Olympic athlete to win gold, and would remain our only female Olympic champion for 40 years.

Eight Kiwi women have followed her on to the middle dais.

But her mum wasn’t one to make a fuss about her achievements, daughter Karen Corlett says.

The long jump gold she won after leaping an Olympic record-breaking 6.24m across a pit of sand in 1952 is now on display at the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in Dunedin.

It wasn’t always so for the gold given to Dame Yvette, then 23, in Helsinki.

“It was kept in a shoebox under the bed for years”, Corlett says.

After their mother’s death in 2019 her children decided to send the gold, and her Empire and Commonwealth Games’ medals — the woman voted in 2000 as Otago Sportsperson of the Century also won four golds in long jump, discus and shot-put, and a silver in javelin throw, at those Games — to the Sports Hall of Fame.

The gold medal and the courthouse door

Jack Cropp and his Sharpie class teammate Peter Mander built Jest, the boat the pair would sail to Olympic victory in Melbourne’s Port Phillip in 1956.

The hull was made from centuries-old kauri, with some rātā and kawaka thrown in.

“The kauri came from an old brewery in Christchurch that was being demolished”, widow Judith Cropp says.

Cropp, who died in 2016, could build an Olympic champion sailboat from scratch, but when his gold medal was later stolen from a museum he could do nothing but wait and hope.

The theft occurred when the medal was on loan to Nelson Provincial Museum for an exhibition on gold, Judith Cropp says.

She heard the bad news on a radio bulletin, but baulked at telling her husband.

“I thought, ‘I’m not telling him. They can ring and tell him.’”

He remembers his father’s — albeit subtle — distress at the loss of the medal, New Zealand’s first sailing Olympic gold, son Hugh Cropp says.

But the medal Cropp had feared lost for good was instead — along with an Empire Games’ gold also swiped, but apparently not the rest of the stolen exhibition loot — anonymously returned one night.

It’s now nestled safely in a chest of drawers.

“The medals were pushed under the Nelson courthouse door,” Judith Cropp says.

“[And] John, he was delighted.”

‘It’s part of New Zealand sailing history’

Twenty-three years after his death, the gold medal of 1956 Olympic 12-metre Sharpie class sailor Peter Mander could soon be going on public display.

Mander’s 91-year-old widow has it at home, but the family has decided it will, likely this year, be donated to the New Zealand Maritime Museum, son Steve Mander says.

“It really needs to be on display, because it’s an important part of New Zealand sailing history.”

Gold medal advice from The Champion of the World

The gold medal Norman Read won for walking 50 kilometres faster than anyone else at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics sits in a cupboard waiting to eventually be passed on to his son, Richard.

He may well count himself lucky.

The gold, which Read won after crossing the finish line with a time of just over four-and-a-half hours and around two minutes ahead of his nearest rival, would later be — unsuccessfully — offered for sale to champion boxer Muhammad Ali and spend two years lost in a school principal’s wardrobe.

It also bounced across the globe to go on loan to a village museum in UK-born Read’s hometown, all adventures connected to her husband’s generosity with his gold medal and his life, widow Megan Read says.

“He was always very generous with what he did with it. He’d take it to schools so kids could do pencil drawings over it. He lent it to a school principal and it was lost for two years before the principal found it in the back of the wardrobe.

Most dramatically, Read tried to sell his gold medal to Ali — himself a 1960 Olympic gold medallist — after digging out the multiple world heavyweight champion’s phone number.

“He wanted to raise money for an all-weather track in Inglewood”, Megan Read says.

“Norman spent every day of his life trying to help others. The gold medal, it’d served its purpose for him.”

But Ali turned his fellow Olympic champion down.

“He actually got through to him but the first thing Muhammad Ali said was, ‘A medal shouldn’t be sold.’”

So it wasn’t.

Her husband wasn’t the kind of person who went around telling people he’d triumphed at the world’s biggest sporting event — including his own kids.

“Our daughter, she was about 10 years old, came home one day and said, ‘The kids at school said our father won a gold medal at the Olympics. How come nobody told us?’

“But you don’t wake up in the morning and go, ‘I’ve won a gold medal,’ do you?”

Our greatest Olympic runner won three gold medals — and all are on public display thanks to the generosity of Sir Peter Snell.

The middle-distance runner gave one of his 1964 golds to the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame and the other two, from 1960 and 1964, to Te Papa.

The latter donation took place two years before Sir Peter’s 2019 death, when he said the golds “really belong to New Zealand”.

“I was representing New Zealand, they made it possible. I just happened to deliver.”

Enduring gift

The year before his 1987 death from lung cancer, Denmark-born Kiwi sailor Helmer Pedersen gave his Flying Dutchman Olympic gold medal to Tāmaki Yacht Club.

It’s remained on display at the club since.

The gold was a source of pride for her uncle, but his generosity is also not surprising, Lone Jorgsholm says.

“He was the most kind, funny, helpful man and treated everybody in a way that made one feel good and important.”

The treasure box

A display box of family treasures is home for Ross Collinge’s Olympic gold medal.

There’s a Weet-Bix Tryathlon medal, cricket medals, a Mexican silver dollar and the gold medal Collinge won as part of the rowing coxed fours in Mexico City.

“If someone has a look at it and I can see they enjoy it,” Collinge says of the gold he won 53 years ago, “then yes, I do still get a buzz from it.”

‘I haven’t had to pawn them yet’

Four medals won over four years — those are what double Olympic champion Dick Joyce considers the most significant markers of his rowing career.

“The two gold medals, 1968 and 1972, the World Championship in 1970 and the European Championship in 1971 — they’re all in a frame hanging on the wall.

“I haven’t had to pawn them yet.”

Legacy

Dudley Storey’s gold medal is in a shadow box frame, which is brought out for those who want to see it, his widow Paula Storey says.

The medal will eventually be given to their daughter, Alison Storey, who also rowed competitively, she says.

Curly questions

When it’s plucked from its lounge cabinet drawer and taken to schools, Athol Earl’s rowing eights gold medal can spark the curliest of queries.

The best follow-up question came from a child of about 10.

“‘Mr Earl, were you any good at sports with no clothes on?’ I had to reply ‘no’ as my wife and the teacher were at the back of the room in fits of giggles.”

When everyone has a gold medal

When John Hunter’s son was a boy he thought everybody had Olympic gold medals, “because Dad and all of Dad’s friends did”.

Hunter was part of the 1972 rowing eights crew who won gold at Munich.

It’s now framed and fixed on the wall alongside his other rowing medals.

“Some years ago my wife got sick of them being in the drawers, so she took them away and framed them.”

‘Why don’t you bring the bloody thing in?’

Tony Hurt looked into selling his gold medal once — but he didn’t like the price.

For now it’s “hidden away at home, in case someone breaks in and steals it”, but he remains unsure of its future, the 1972 rowing eights Olympic champion says.

“When I finally kick the bucket, my kids, it’s of no value to them. When you’ve got three kids how do you split these things up?”

His brief dalliance with the world of sports’ memorabilia ended when told he’d only get around $42,000 for his gold medal.

But the gold still brought joy.

“It’s done all the usual things, schools, things like that. And I’m in the plumbing trade and at the merchants, they were always saying, ‘Why don’t you bring the bloody thing in so we can see it?’”

So a morning tea was arranged for other plumbers who use the same merchant and Hurt arrived with his gold medal.

“They were all putting it on, taking pictures. The guys all got such a buzz out of it.”

In with the smalls

Gary Robertson’s gold medal doesn’t get out much.

“It’s in a drawer with my smalls”, the rowing eights Olympic champion says.

His three children took the medal to school when they were kids, but now it only emerges when people show an interest in an Olympic year.

“It doesn’t get shown very often, but when it does, people think it’s pretty cool.”

‘The medal is the bonus’

A shoebox in the shed was home for Wybo Veldman’s rowing eights Olympic gold, until he showed someone his medal and was told it was “in a disgusting state”.

So he spent $150 to have it replated and moved it from the shed to a top drawer inside the house.

“The winning’s the ultimate goal and the medal is the bonus. It was a privilege to be there, and to win.”

‘It belongs ... to all Kiwis’

“Bloody Kiwis”, says Lindsay Wilson, when he hears the sorry fate of some New Zealand Olympic champions’ gold medals — especially those stuffed in the sock drawer.

“I hate those stories about the medal being in the sock drawer. Downright disrespectful.”

His rowing eights gold medal is framed so he can protect its sensitive gold coating, but also share it with others.

“That’s important,” Wilson says.

“Because it belongs to a lot of people. Not just you and your family, but all Kiwis really.”

‘Usually it’s ... hidden away’

Her husband Paul wasn’t the kind of person who made a fuss about having an Olympic gold medal, and his medal remains mostly at home in the years since his death in 2011, widow Rosemary Ackerley says.

“Occasionally it goes on a school visit with some of the grandkids,” she says of Ackerley’s 1976 Games’ hockey gold.

“But usually it’s just sat there hidden away.”

Safe in the safe

His gold medal is kept in a safe at his wife’s legal firm, hockey Olympic champion Jeff Archibald says.

“It usually comes out at pre-Olympic time for a school visit somewhere and was recently at the 6-year-old granddaughter’s primary school for a ‘my family’ day.”

The shared gold medal

Les Wilson was part of the triumphant New Zealand hockey team at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

But when the team beat Australia 1-0 in the gold medal decider, Wilson, along with teammate Neil McLeod could only watch as 14 of their teammates stepped on to the dais to receive their gold medals.

In an International Olympic Committee rule later changed, Wilson and McLeod weren’t awarded a medal because they didn’t take the field during the tournament.

Until this month, though, Whanganui-based Wilson did have a gold medal.

His teammate’s — Arthur “Tur” Borren.

“He’d met my grandson when we had the signing of the book,” says Wilson of the chain of events which led to Borren’s gold medal spending five years in his possession.

“He said, ‘I’ll send it down, for Flynn.’”

Borren, who lives in Auckland, bonded with the then 10-year-old during the 2016 promotion for the book about the team’s Montreal victory, Striking Gold.

“He held the books down and I signed them”, Borren says.

He wanted Flynn to have the same experience his own children had when they took dad’s gold medal to school.

“People get so excited ... and [the gold medal], it’s done all the good it’s going to do for me, and my family have all seen it.”

He also wanted his teammate to enjoy the experience of having a gold medal during an Olympics year, when people are especially interested.

Wilson remembers Borren calling and telling him he was “sending it down”.

“He said, ‘I’ve had it for 40 years, you can have it for a bit. If anything happens to me, give it to my daughter’ ... and he said, ‘Don’t you let anyone say you didn’t earn it — you earned it.’

The gold medal was passed on to Flynn, who was soon “proudly showing it off at school”. It had been safely kept in Wilson’s home since.

But it was time for the medal to be returned, Wilson told the Herald last month. He planned to do so at a reunion between the pair this month.

“I want to take it back.”

Crash

A carton in the garage is home for Tony Ineson’s hockey Olympic gold, except when kids get a peek on school or sports team visits.

“So far my gold medal has stayed pretty much intact, although on one occasion the eyelet holding the medal to the chain came adrift and the medal hit the deck.

“The little child holding the medal was a bit upset, but I told her, ‘It’s not your fault, no big deal.’”

Stashed in the spare room

When it’s not going to businesses, promotional events or on school visits — the grandkids especially “got a great kick out of taking it to school to show off” — his 1976 hockey gold medal is displayed in a glass case in a spare bedroom, Alan McIntyre says.

‘The medal went off like a slingshot’

The gold medal Arthur Parkin won as left wing for the New Zealand men’s hockey team doesn’t get out much from its hidey spot in his wardrobe these days.

Might be a good thing.

Full of Aussie champagne — the overconfident silver medallists bought a crate of champagne to celebrate their expected final match win, then generously shared it with their Kiwi victors — the 1976 Olympic champions soon made their way to a German-style beer hall in Montreal.

That turned out to be bad news for Parkin’s gold medal, and worse for the venue’s resident bassist.

“I took my medal off and was swinging it around my head in circles, but I didn’t realise the gold chain had come loose.

“The medal went off like a slingshot, went about 20 metres, and hit the bass player in the band square in the forehead before crashing through the speakers.

He apologised to the bassist — who was left with a large lump — latched the undamaged medal back on to its chain and resisted temptation to ever swing it above his head again.

“Since that day, my medal’s stayed pretty close to home.”

‘It’s just another toy they know they can play with’

It’s part of New Zealand sporting history but for his grandkids, Ramesh Patel’s 1976 men’s hockey gold medal is “just another toy”.

Patel likes to keep his medal handy for the under-5s set.

“My medal is kept in the living room where my grandchildren can see it and play with it. They wear it around their necks, play with it and swing it around.

“Their parents are on edge, but I’m not so much ... it’s just another toy they know they can play with, but also know that they have to put it back in the case when they finish — if they remember.”

Others also enjoy seeing an Olympic gold medal — among them adults who “pretend they’re just bringing their kids along” for the experience, Patel says.

“But they like to see it too.”

‘It’s fun to see people’s reactions’

Grant Bramwell’s Olympic gold has had an upgrade.

“It was in the undie drawer and now it’s been upgraded to a shoebox”, the Gisborne pharmacy owner says of his 1984 Games’ kayaking fours 1000m gold medal.

“It comes out very rarely, I can’t think when it last was. It’s always fun though to see other people’s reactions to it, especially kids.”

Four golds for four grandkids

Five Olympic medals for five Olympic rings — that’s the plan for our most successful Olympian as he works to include his gold and silver medal success into his dream home in Northland.

Ian Ferguson’s four golds — three from the 1984 Los Angeles Games and one from Seoul in 1988 — have, along with his pairs 1000m silver medal, spent most of the last three decades in his attic, the champion kayaker says.

“Now I’ve got a plan. I’m making a big frame with five Olympic rings, painting them [Olympic colours] and putting a medal inside each hole. It’ll make them look really good on the wall.”

The medals lack of visibility’s been on his mind, Ferguson says.

“Since building my own house, I had this brainwave to put them up this way.”

People like seeing them, but are sometimes too self-conscious to say, he says.

“The guy tiling the house, he wanted to see them. He got so embarrassed about asking me. I had to go dig them out.”

For him the medals were a tangible reminder of being the best in his sport.

“It’s not so much about the medals, it’s about the moment of winning. Even if they all get stolen, nothing changes that.”

The Olympics ring frame isn’t for forever — it’ll go when he does.

“I’ve got four grandkids, so they’ll get one each. I’m not expecting any more grandkids, but if I do then they’ll just have to get the silver.”

‘My medal doesn’t see daylight much’

Burglars pinched the Olympic gold medal given to coxless fours rower Shane O’Brien — snatching it from under his mother’s bed during a break-in 15 years ago.

“It was never found but a mentor and old coach of mine, Kerry Ashby — now sadly deceased — managed to get me a replacement from the IOC”, O’Brien says.

“He and my lovely wife surprised me in 2012.”

The replacement medal’s now stashed in a drawer of his home in Dubai, where he works as a director at an English speaking school.

“I think I am probably a typical Kiwi and my medal doesn’t see daylight much.”

‘It would be good to have it in the open’

Les O’Connell’s gold medal is “just at home”, but that may change, the 1984 rowing coxless fours Olympic champion says.

“It’s been very well looked after. It very rarely comes out. But I think it probably should go to the Sports Hall of Fame.

“Very rarely do people ever get to see a gold medal, so it would be good to have it out in the open.”

The well-travelled gold

With three kids and a curious community, Conrad Robertson’s coxless four rowing gold medal’s “been around the traps”.

“It’s been to schools and passed around the classroom. I live in Warkworth and occasionally people used to come and take a look at it,” the 1984 Games’ rower says.

These days it spends most of its time at home, tucked away “in the drawer where my smalls are”.

‘They’re hard to win’

“Just in my drawer”, Keith Trask says of his 1984 coxless rowing fours gold medal.

“I’ve got grandkids, so I’m looking forward to it going to their [school] classes.”

A gold medal is “just a reminder of what you did”.

“The whole performance is what it’s about. They’re hard to win.”

‘It defines me’

There used to be more demand to see his gold medal, Olympic champion Rex Sellers says.

“But nobody knows who I am anymore.”

He’s New Zealand’s most successful Olympic yachtsman, with a fourth placing and a silver along with his 1984 Games’ Tornado class gold, kept safe at home and still much treasured by the sailor.

“It defines me really. It’s something nobody can take away from me. If things are going wrong you can look at it and know you were the best in the world once.”

‘Occasionally someone old remembers those days’

His gold medals are stored in his son’s safe, Alan Thompson says of the two he won for kayaking in Los Angeles.

Before that they spent most of their life in a sock drawer or cupboard, he says.

“They usually only come out every four years for the usual school visits, and occasionally someone old that remembers those days.”

‘It was the highlight of his life’

Chris Timms kept his Olympic gold medal inside a box in a cupboard, but after he died in a 2004 plane crash, a friend put it in a special frame for the funeral.

The medal — for winning the Tornado class at Los Angeles in 1984, and with some of its gold rubbed off because Timms wanted as many people as possible to hold it — now hangs on the wall of her home, widow Suzanne Timms says.

“It was the highlight of his life. He was totally proud of it, and I’m very proud of it too.”

‘Nice to see the joy’

More than 30 years have passed since Bruce Kendall beat his rivals in Seoul and chomped on a gold medal.

“The gold has a tooth mark where I bit it”, says the board sailer, a bronze medallist four years earlier.

“[And I’m] not sure how to wash the ribbons.”

The gold spent years in a sock drawer, but has since moved to a “secret place in my home, just in case we ever get robbed”, emerging only to be shared with the curious.

“Nice to see the joy people have from holding and wearing them.”

Fire risk

When a bush fire came close to her house, boardsailer Barbara Kendall had 10 minutes to decide what to grab.

She chose the Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals she won in 1992, 1996 and 2000 respectively.

“They aren’t replaceable. They used to live in my office drawer. Now they live in a fireproof safe when I’m not taking them to visit [NZOC Olympic Ambassadors programme] schools.”

Oops

Equestrian Blyth Tait was once flown from the United Kingdom to New Zealand to speak at an event and, he thinks perhaps more importantly to the organiser, show his individual eventing Olympic gold medal.

He left it behind.

“I got on the plane and realised I’d forgotten my medals”, Tait says of his 1996 gold and the Olympic silver and pair of bronzes he’s also won, now stored in a briefcase.

“In Hong Kong I tried to courier them but I couldn’t because they were considered literally irreplaceable. I had to go to the event without the medals — I wasn’t too popular.”

‘The biggest reward was sharing that medal with everyone’

It’s a beautiful medal but the special case it came in turned out to be quite flimsy, so Rob Waddell’s gold medal is now encased in a thick sock, tucked inside an office drawer.

His three kids — all born in the decade after the rower won gold in the single sculls at Sydney — haven’t shown much interest in their dad’s biggest sporting success, so the medal rarely emerges from its cosy home.

“Ironically, [wife] Sonia and I competed in the Masters Championships a few years ago and the kids were in awe of our medals [from that]. That bought us a bit of credibility.”

His Olympic gold is a “lovely piece of memorabilia to share with everyone”, as success doesn’t come from the work of one, Waddell says.

“The biggest reward was sharing that medal with everyone who was there [in 2000]. Saying, ‘here’s what we’ve done, and thank you’.”

‘I do forget about them’

Soft sunglasses cases inside a drawer are the safe spot Caroline Meyer (nee Evers-Swindell) has made for the two Olympic golds she won alongside twin sister Georgina in the double Sculls.

She thinks.

“I think they’re there”, she says of her Athens and Beijing golds.

“I do forget about them.”

The biggest adventure for the medals was being sent to her cousin’s children in Christchurch for school, which gave Meyer a buzz.

“That makes me really happy.”

From Athens to — almost — the Sallies

The Sallies no doubt have some interesting items pushed into their clothing bins.

Our sole cycling Olympic champion’s gold medal was — but for a late save by her partner — almost among them.

“Brendon found it in the inside pocket of a bag destined for the Salvation Army store”, Athens gold medallist Sarah Ulmer says.

“[It was] perilously close. It was in the bag by the front door waiting for drop off.”

It wasn’t the first time her 3000m individual pursuit gold — now safely kept in a shoebox inside the wardrobe — had been misplaced, Ulmer says.

“I did actually lose it for a few years. I had to borrow a friend’s one a couple of times during that time, when I was visiting schools.”

A New Zealand first

Her medals, including two Olympic golds, are stored in a safe, a spokeswoman for Dame Valerie Adams says.

Her first shot-put gold arrived in the traditional way, lifted over her head in Beijing National Stadium; the second — awarded after Belarusian Nadzeya Ostapchuk was stripped of her 2012 first placing for drug use — was the first Olympic gold to be presented on New Zealand soil when a special ceremony was held on Auckland’s waterfront.

“I’m glad that this medal is around my neck”, Dame Valerie said. “Now I can eat the chocolate one [coach] Jean-Pierre [Egger] gave me.”

‘It would feel a bit self-congratulatory to have it on display’

The storage box location of his gold medal is no reflection of its importance to him, Beijing boardsailing Olympic champion Tom Ashley says. “I have amazing memories from my time as an athlete, so having the medal hidden away definitely isn’t an indication that I don’t value the time or the people who helped me achieve that milestone.

“If anything, it’s more of an interior design choice, and it would feel a bit self-congratulatory to have it on display.”

Dropsies

It lives on a “random electrical admin shelf” and is a bit banged up from being dropped many times over the years, 470 class sailing Olympic champion Jo Aleh says of the London gold she won alongside teammate Olivia Powrie.

“I have a great memory of passing my medal around at a school and a young girl accidentally dropped it ... it has a little chip from that.

“She just felt so bad, and I had to reassure her it’s completely fine and I have done it as well.”

Stashed

A side drawer and a box under the bed are home for sprint kayaking double Olympic champion Lisa Carrington’s London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 golds.

“Not very interesting, but that’s where they are”, says Carrington, who is on the hunt for a third gold at Tokyo.

Too loved

Mahe Drysdale keeps his two gold medals in his wardrobe, except when one — his 2016 single sculls rowing gold — had to be re-coated.

“Mine have certainly been ‘loved’ by many so look a little worse for wear. The Rio ones, all the gold wore off, so they recoated them.”

In a months-long process, Drysdale’s and other affected golds went on a round-the-world journey from the New Zealand Olympic Committee to the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland to the Brazilian mint which made them, before being returned to New Zealand via Switzerland.

‘The joy is actually pretty cool’

There’s a good reason so many Olympians like to stash their medals in socks, double Olympic champion rower Eric Murray says.

“The [medal] cases are pretty cool,” he says of those presented when he won gold in 2008 and 2012.

“But my cases have got a bit hammered ... the only reason [for people choosing] the sock is it’s the easiest way to carry your medal around.”

His golds remain on a shelf in the hallway, and are willed to his 9-year-old son.
Until then, Murray will keep enjoying them with others.

“You do get a buzz out of seeing people with your medals. The joy is actually pretty cool.”

‘It’s important to me for people to be able to enjoy it’

Glovebox, backpack, drawers and tiny, inquisitive fingers — Joseph Sullivan’s gold medal is rarely in one place.

And that’s just how the rowing Olympic champion likes it.

“It’s pretty hammered-looking now”, Sullivan says of the gold he won alongside double sculls partner Nathan Cohen in London nine years ago.

“It’s not as shiny as it used to be and it’s got small children teeth marks — you’d be shocked how many kids put it straight into their mouths.”

Among those kids, his own.

Pre-schooler Amelia loves playing with her dad’s gold medal — which also briefly found a home in a vase full of Sullivan’s other rowing medals, put together as a centrepiece by wife Jordyn.

Unfortunately the vase wasn’t up to the destructive power of a curious almost 2-year-old.

“It looked quite cool till the child decided to get into it.”

Another chink in his medal came after a friend used it to open a beer bottle.
The move left a small dent and sparked a big apology.

Although he’s not keen on a repeat, there’s also no hard feelings, Sullivan says.

He has no intention of hiding his medal away, safe from knocks but also depriving fellow Kiwis from the thrill of seeing an Olympic gold.

“It’s way more important to me for people to be able to see it and enjoy it.”

*Some Olympic champions or their families and descendants chose not to take part