By one measure, our first New Zealand Olympics team was among our most successful. After all, one in four of them won a medal. Well, there were only four in the squad that went to
Paris in 1924 and the medallist was Arthur Porritt – that’s him on the far left – who won bronze in the 100m dash. The race featured in the 1981 British film Chariots of Fire about English runners Harold Abrahams – that’s him breasting the tape for gold – and Eric Liddell, who won the 400m. Porritt became “Tom Watson” in the movie after asking for his name not to be used, reportedly out of humility. Whanganui-born Porritt was studying medicine at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship at the time of the Games. His career included wartime service as a brigadier in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Post-war, he became King’s Surgeon to George VI, then Sergeant Surgeon to Queen Elizabeth II. In 1967, she appointed him Governor-General of New Zealand, the first NZ-born appointee to the role. The Lord Porritt, Bt, GCMG, GCVO, CBE, KStJ, FRCS died in 1994 in London, having returned there after his tenure as G-G. As he said, he became a “complete Pommy”, but “never ceased to be a New Zealander’'.
