Dick Tayler won New Zealand's first gold medal of the Christchurch Commonwealth Games when he beat Englishman David Bedford, the hot favourite, in the 10,000m.
The lift that Tayler's victory gave to the national mood was captured in T.P. McLean's front-page report in the Herald:
"The crowd erupted in joy as Tayler passed through the finishing beam of the 10,000 metres.
"So did Tayler. As he raced through what used to be the tape but is now an invisible time-barrier, he lifted his arms, leapt twice, ecstatically, into the air, reaching his hand triumphantly to the sky, then fell backward on to the track and lay supine.
"In renewed realisation that he, not David Bedford, not the frightening Kenyans, not anyone else but he, Richard Tayler, was the gold medallist of this great event, he raised his legs in the air."
