KEY POINTS:
Milling around the athletes' village yesterday, rowing bronze medallist George Bridgewater took hold of the silver around cyclist Hayden Roulston's neck and said: "Your one looks better than ours."
"Yeah, but I like the look of one of those better," Roulston replied, pointing at Caroline Evers-Swindell's gold.
A dose of medal envy was inevitable on the morning after New Zealanders won two golds, one silver and two bronzes in Beijing on a super Saturday in the country's sporting history.
No other day has yielded more Olympic rewards. The previous best one-day haul was four bronzes in Seoul 20 years ago to swimmers Anthony Mosse and Paul Kingsman, single sculler Eric Verdonk, and coxless pair Lynley Hannen and Nikki Payne.
It was a day for Olympic history on many fronts. Valerie Vili's shot put gold was the first in athletics for 32 years, the Evers-Swindell sisters are only the fourth New Zealand Olympic champions to defend a title and Roulston's individual pursuit silver was only the third New Zealand medal in the velodrome.
Bronzes to single sculler Mahe Drysdale and men's pair Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle rounded out the day.
It was a formidable way to end week one of the Games and set up week two, giving inspiration to remaining Kiwi competitors.
And a swag of New Zealanders are poised to elbow their way on to the podium.
The cycling pursuit team look good for a bronze medal against Australia tonight, the triathlon team will today and tomorrow be looking to emulate their successful Athens campaign, medal chances remain alive in at least four sailing classes, the canoeing team begin their races for gold today and Sarah Walker and Marc Willers will be trying to etch their names into the record books as the Olympics' first BMX champions.
Of course, being a medal contender is no guarantee of anything. Ask Drysdale. For three years, he reigned supreme as world champion, but in the week he had dreamed of since 2004, he fell ill and ended the race stricken and in need of medical help.
He will return home with a bronze, but in his reaction to the misfortune that struck him, he was a true champion.
Despite being hooked up to a drip before the race, he refused to offer any excuses.
"It's the Olympics - if you get ill, you've got to deal with it," he said yesterday. "I got an email from [administrator and former champion] Don Rowlands saying, 'The will is bigger than the skill', and I still felt I was capable of winning. If it was 1900m long, I probably would have, but it's a 2km race."
There was evidence aplenty, too, of the mental toughness that we as a nation fret about losing.
Not only did Drysdale show guts in giving it his best shot, Vili and the Evers-Swindells proved New Zealand's elite athletes can outwit and out-psyche the opposition when it counts most.
Vili's brutish overpowering of her opponents must go down as the most dominant New Zealand track and field performance since Peter Snell left the 1500m field for dead in Tokyo.
And for a country that worries about its athletes choking, New Zealand needs look no further for assurance than to the Evers-Swindells.
They led their race for only one one-hundredths of a second - but it was the one one-hundredths of a second that mattered most.
