Young Arthur Porritt was a member of the New Zealand Olympic Team in 1924. Photo / Getty Images
Young Arthur Porritt was a member of the New Zealand Olympic Team in 1924. Photo / Getty Images
Whanganui-born Arthur Espie Porritt was a Rhodes scholar, eminent surgeon, Olympic medal winner and Governor-General of New Zealand from 1967 to 1972.
Long before he achieved world renown he attended Hurworth School in Grey St, Whanganui, where he was already a promising athlete winning a number of prizes.
Three pewter cups won by young Porritt recently came up for sale in an online auction and Paul Riddler, of Wellington, is delighted to have made the winning bid.
"He was an incredible man and I've always been interested in his fascinating life," Riddler said.
"To own these prizes he won so early in his life makes me very happy."
Riddler has checked the provenance of the awards and National Library records confirm the young Porritt won the Hurworth School cups for the 100 yards and 220 yards senior championships as well as the senior championship award in 1913.
"I am so pleased to have acquired these national treasures," Riddler said.
"Especially the 100 yards senior champ cup because 12 years later Arthur Porritt went on to win the 100-metre sprint bronze medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris.
"The same race that was immortalised in the movie Chariots of Fire in 1981."
Athletics trophies won by Whanganui schoolboy Arthur Porritt in 1913.
Photo / Supplied
Porritt refused to be named or portrayed in the film and is reputed to have predicted that it would be a "tinpot" little movie.
The bronze medal-winning runner in Chariots of Fire was a fictional character named Tom Watson.
Porritt would later tell biographers Graeme Woodfield and Joseph Romanos that he regretted his decision to not be involved with the film.
Chariots of Fire would win four Oscars and when the biography No Ordinary Man: The Remarkable Life of Arthur Porritt was published in 2008 Woodfield told the Herald Porritt regretted his decision to his last days.
"He thought it was going to be another Hollywood-type movie, which wouldn't do justice to athletics," Woodfield said.
"He was also worried that as a doctor it could have been portrayed as medical advertising, and in those days doctors weren't allowed to advertise."
Woodfield said keeping up with Porritt's achievements was exhausting.
"He had a life that was crammed with activity, so when you read the book you could be forgiven for thinking 'I haven't done anything in life in comparison'."
Hurworth School amalgamated with Heretaunga School in Hastings in 1927 to become Hereworth School, still operating as an independent boys' school in Havelock North.
Porritt went on to study at Whanganui's Collegiate School the year after winning the pewter cups, before beginning his medical studies at the University of Otago in 1920.
He would become a decorated war hero, a respected medical author and a surgeon to the royal family for 30 years. He was made a Baronet of Hampstead in 1963 and when elevated to the peerage in 1973, he honoured his hometown by becoming Baron Porritt, of Wanganui in New Zealand and of Hampstead in Greater London.
Porritt died aged 93 in London on the first day of 1994.
