New Zealand at the Olympics

New Zealand first sent an independent team to the Olympics in 1920. Before this, at the 1908 and 1912 Summer Olympics, New Zealand and Australian athletes competed together in a combined Australasia team. New Zealand has also participated in most Winter Olympic Games since 1952, missing only the 1956 and 1964 Games.

New Zealand at the Olympics
IOC code	NZL
NOC	New Zealand Olympic Committee
Website	www.olympic.org.nz
Medals Ranked 25th	Gold 65 Silver 42 Bronze 56 Total 163
Summer appearances
1908 1912 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 2024
Winter appearances
1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022
Other related appearances
Australasia (1908–1912)

The New Zealand rowing team at the 1932 Summer Olympics

The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) is the National Olympic Committee for New Zealand. The NZOC was founded in 1911, and recognised by the IOC in 1919.

New Zealand athletes have won a total of 163 medals, with 157 won at the Summer Games and six at the Winter Games. The most successful sport has been rowing with 33 medals, with athletics second with 28 medals. Before the 2022 Winter Olympics, the 140 medals won by New Zealand put the country at number 32 on the all-time Olympic Games medal table for total number of medals and number 24 when weighted by medal type.

Following the 2020 Summer Olympics, 1519 competitors represented New Zealand at the Olympic Games. Harry Kerr is considered^[1] the first Kiwi Olympian^[2] and Adrian Blincoe the 1000th.^[3] On 11 June 2009 it was reported that of the 1111 Olympians to that date, 114 were deceased and the whereabouts of 21 were unknown.^[3] By 25 June 2009, only 9 Olympians had not been located.^[4] There are no living Kiwi Olympians from before the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.^[3][5]

New Zealand at the Summer Games

The first person from New Zealand to compete at the Olympic Games was Victor Lindberg, who was a member of the Osborne Swimming Club, which represented Great Britain in water polo at the 1900 Summer Olympics and won gold.

Three New Zealanders won medals competing for Australasian teams in 1908 and 1912. New Zealand sent its first independent team to the VII Olympiad in 1920, comprising two runners, a rower, and a 15-year-old swimmer.

Due to its location in the South Pacific and distance from the early Olympic host cities in Europe and North America, New Zealanders needed to undertake long sea voyages to participate. Since the advent of international jet air travel in the 1950s, and the greater number of Olympic sports, the size of New Zealand Olympic teams has increased substantially. New Zealand, like other Southern Hemisphere countries, has had the disadvantage of needing to peak to compete in summer sports that are held during their winter months. Only three Olympics have been held in the Southern Hemisphere, the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

New Zealand's participation in the 1976 Games was controversial, and led to a boycott of the Games by most African countries, who protested against sporting contacts between the All Blacks and apartheid South Africa.

New Zealand at the Winter Games

New Zealand has had a much smaller participation in the Winter Olympics, owing to its oceanic climate and Southern Hemisphere location requiring athletes to peak in the middle of the New Zealand summer. The nation did not assemble its first Winter Olympic team until 1952. In 1988 the team included bobsleighers; the first entry in a winter sport other than alpine skiing.

In 1992, Annelise Coberger of New Zealand became the first person from the Southern Hemisphere to win a medal at the Winter Olympics when she won silver in the slalom at Albertville in France.

In 2018, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won New Zealand's second Winter Olympic medal in the inaugural big air snowboarding competition in Pyeongchang, South Korea, winning bronze. Later on the same day, 16-year-old Nico Porteous won New Zealand's third Winter Olympic medal in the men's ski halfpipe, also taking bronze.

Four years later in 2022, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott also won New Zealand's first-ever Winter Olympics gold medal, in the women's slopestyle. Nico Porteous later won New Zealand’s second-ever Winter Olympics gold medal, again in the men’s ski half pipe.

Athlete selection and sport funding

Athletes are chosen by the national sporting bodies and nominated to the NZOC for selection. The selection process was overhauled after the disappointing performance at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, where the 151 New Zealand athletes returned with just four medals (one gold and three bronze). The NZOC devised rules by which an athlete would only be selected if they had a chance to reach the final 16 in an Olympic competition. It also resulted in an overhaul of the way high-performance sport is funded, with Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) set up to change from a block funding model to targeted investments. This also forced some sporting bodies to amalgamate as SPARC would only deal with one funding body per sport.^[6]

Participation

Timeline of participation

Date	Team
1900–1904	Australia (AUS)
1908–1912	Australasia (ANZ)
1920–	Australia (AUS)	New Zealand (NZL)

Medal tables

Medals by Summer Games Games Athletes  Gold  Silver  Bronze Total Rank 1896 Athens did not participate 1900 Paris 1904 St. Louis 1908 London as part of  Australasia (ANZ) 1912 Stockholm 1920 Antwerp 4 0 0 1 1 22 1924 Paris 4 0 0 1 1 23 1928 Amsterdam 10 1 0 0 1 24 1932 Los Angeles 21 0 1 0 1 22 1936 Berlin 7 1 0 0 1 20 1948 London 7 0 0 0 0 – 1952 Helsinki 14 1 0 2 3 24 1956 Melbourne 53 2 0 0 2 16 1960 Rome 37 2 0 1 3 14 1964 Tokyo 64 3 0 2 5 12 1968 Mexico City 52 1 0 2 3 27 1972 Munich 89 1 1 1 3 23 1976 Montreal 80 2 1 1 4 18 1980 Moscow 4 0 0 0 0 – 1984 Los Angeles 130 8 1 2 11 8 1988 Seoul 83 3 2 8 13 18 1992 Barcelona 134 1 4 5 10 28 1996 Atlanta 97 3 2 1 6 26 2000 Sydney 151 1 0 3 4 46 2004 Athens 148 3 2 0 5 24 2008 Beijing 182 3 2 4 9 25 2012 London 184 6 2 5 13 15 2016 Rio de Janeiro 199 4 9 5 18 19 2020 Tokyo 213 7 6 7 20 13 2024 Paris 195 10 7 3 20 11 2028 Los Angeles 2032 Brisbane Total 63 40 54 157 22

Medals by Winter Games Games Athletes  Gold  Silver  Bronze Total Rank 1924 Chamonix did not participate 1928 St. Moritz 1932 Lake Placid 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1948 St. Moritz 1952 Oslo 3 0 0 0 0 – 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo did not participate 1960 Squaw Valley 4 0 0 0 0 – 1964 Innsbruck did not participate 1968 Grenoble 6 0 0 0 0 – 1972 Sapporo 2 0 0 0 0 – 1976 Innsbruck 5 0 0 0 0 – 1980 Lake Placid 5 0 0 0 0 – 1984 Sarajevo 6 0 0 0 0 – 1988 Calgary 9 0 0 0 0 – 1992 Albertville 6 0 1 0 1 17 1994 Lillehammer 7 0 0 0 0 – 1998 Nagano 8 0 0 0 0 – 2002 Salt Lake City 10 0 0 0 0 – 2006 Turin 18 0 0 0 0 – 2010 Vancouver 16 0 0 0 0 – 2014 Sochi 15 0 0 0 0 – 2018 Pyeongchang 21 0 0 2 2 26 2022 Beijing 15 2 1 0 3 17 2026 Milano Cortina future event 2030 French Alps 2034 Salt Lake City Total 2 2 2 6 37

Medals by Summer Sport   Leading in that sport Sport Gold Silver Bronze Total  Rowing 15 7 11 33  Canoeing 14 3 2 19  Athletics 11 4 13 28  Sailing 9 9 7 25  Cycling 3 7 5 15  Equestrian 3 2 5 10  Rugby sevens 2 2 0 4  Swimming 2 1 3 6  Triathlon 1 2 2 5  Boxing 1 1 2 4  Golf 1 1 1 3  Field hockey 1 0 0 1  Shooting 0 1 1 2  Gymnastics 0 0 1 1  Tennis 0 0 1 1 Totals (15 entries) 63 40 54 157

Medals by Winter Sport Sport Gold Silver Bronze Total  Snowboarding 1 1 1 3  Freestyle skiing 1 0 1 2  Alpine skiing 0 1 0 1 Totals (3 entries) 2 2 2 6

Summary by sport

Sailing

Games	No. Sailors	Events	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Ranking
1896	Scheduled but event wasn't held
1900	0	0/13	0	0	0	0
1904	Not Scheduled
1908	0	0/4	0	0	0	0
1912	0	0/4	0	0	0	0
1916	Games Cancelled
1920	0	0/14	0	0	0	0
1924	0	0/3	0	0	0	0
1928	0	0/3	0	0	0	0
1932	0	0/4	0	0	0	0
1936	0	0/4	0	0	0	0
1940	Games Cancelled
1944	Games Cancelled
1948	0	0/5	0	0	0	0
1952	0	0/5	0	0	0	0
1956	5	2/5	1	0	0	1	4
1960	3	2/5	0	0	0	0
1964	3	2/5	1	0	0	1	3
1968	3	2/5	0	0	0	0
1972	9	4/6	0	0	0	0
1976	8	4/6	0	0	0	0
1980	0	0/6	0	0	0	0
1984	11	6/7	2	0	1	3	2
1988	13	7/8	1	1	1	3	3
1992	17	10/10	1	2	1	4	4
1996	16	10/10	0	1	0	1	12
2000	18	11/11	0	0	2	2	12
2004	12	8/11	0	0	0	0
2008	9	7/11	1	0	0	1	6
2012	15	9/10	1	1	0	2	5
2016	12	7/10	1	2	1	4	4
2020	10	6/10	0	1	0	1	11=
Total			9	8	6	23	9

See also

• List of flag bearers for New Zealand at the Olympics
• List of New Zealand Olympic medallists
• Category:Olympic competitors for New Zealand
• New Zealand Olympic Committee
• New Zealand at the Paralympics

References

1. The New Zealand Olympic Committee records all athletes chosen for the Olympics, numbered sequentially. Harry Kerr is identified as "New Zealand Olympian: 1".
2. New Zealand Olympic Committee: Harry Kerr
3. Leggat, David (11 June 2009). "21 Kiwi Olympians fail to register". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
4. "New Zealand Olympic Committee: 1111 Olympians Honoured this Week". Archived from the original on 12 April 2010. Retrieved 14 September 2009.
5. "Obituary". Stuff/Fairfax. 24 July 2021.
6. Johannsen, Dana (10 May 2024). "The almost Olympians: How the NZOC's selection criteria scuppered Olympic dreams". Radio New Zealand. Retrieved 15 July 2024.

External links

• "New Zealand". International Olympic Committee. 27 July 2021.
• "New Zealand". Olympedia.com.
• "Olympic Analytics/NZL". olympanalyt.com.
• Athletics in the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand has a paragraph on each Olympiad and Empire Games to 1964
• The Olympics (NZHistory.net.nz)
• The Joseph Romanos list of our best Olympians
• Medal Count for NZ at DatabaseOlympics.com (total of 78 not complete)
• New Zealand Olympic Committee's Museum App
• "New Zealand". Sports-Reference.com. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020.