A sculpture capturing one of New Zealand athletics' most heartbreaking Olympic moments has found a new home at Upper Moutere's MacMillan gallery.
Titled The Last Meter, the artwork depicts the desperate sprint to the finish line during the men's 5000m final at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
One of the athletes immortalised in the sculpture is local Olympian Rod Dixon, who has kept the piece in storage for many years. For much of that time, he had mixed feelings about the moment it captured, but recently decided the artwork could serve a greater purpose. He enlisted the help of local artist Michael MacMillan to bring it back to life.
Rod, who grew up in Nelson and now lives in Upper Moutere, had already won a bronze medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics and arrived in Montreal in peak form, hoping to add another.
He still vividly recalls the dramatic finish in 1976. Rod knew it was close but believed he had done enough to secure bronze.
Officials instructed the four athletes to wait while they studied the photo finish. The runners were then called forward one by one. Finland's Lasse Virén received gold, followed by New Zealander Dick Quax with silver.
Rod was convinced his name would be next.
Instead, officials called Germany's Klaus-Peter Hildenbrand, who had controversially dived for the line at the last moment.
"And they pointed at me and said, bye bye."
Rod remembers running back to his hotel room, sitting on the bed and bursting into tears. He had missed out on a medal by one-eighth of a second.
His focus then shifted to the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, where he hoped for redemption. Rod was competing on the racing circuit with John Walker in Philadelphia when another crushing blow arrived.
"The media came out and said, 'Fantastic guys, you're in the best shape of your lives - sorry you're not going to the Olympics.'"
This was how the athletes learned that New Zealand would join about 65 other nations in boycotting the Moscow Games following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
For New Zealand's 271st Olympian, the chance for redemption vanished.
Time has softened those disappointments. The setbacks led Rod in a different direction as he turned his focus to road racing. He later gained huge international acclaim by winning the New York City Marathon in 1983.
The artwork now on display is one of 10 smaller versions of a full-sized piece created by Finnish-American artist Eino Romppanen and commissioned for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Rod says the sculpture was selected to capture the spirit of the Games, with each athlete receiving a smaller version.
He laughs as he remembers sitting for hours while Eino carefully studied every detail of the famous finish-line image, his head thrown back and mouth agape as the artist recreated the split-second moment.
For years, Rod's sculpture and the pall of its history remained in storage.
"I didn't really want to be reminded," he says with a wry smile.
A key part of Rod's legacy has been encouraging young people to run. He founded KiDSMARATHON, an in-school running and education programme operating in the United States, New Zealand, Ireland and the Philippines.
The programme allows children to complete a full marathon over several weeks and is built around Rod's belief that "finishing is winning".
Earlier this year, Rod decided the sculpture could become part of that mission and knew exactly who to call.
He had become friends with Michael MacMillan and Jackie Crow through regular bike rides around the Moutere, often stopping at the gallery for a “Dixsey special” - espresso with no sugar and generous lashings of cream.
Michael says it was an honour to help restore and display the sculpture. He built a wooden plinth for the piece and worked alongside local engineer Ken Read, who produced the Corten steel platform.
Getting the finish line positioned precisely beneath the runners' feet proved one of the biggest challenges, Michael says, and one he was determined to get right.
The sculpture will remain on display at the Neudorf Road gallery for the coming weeks, and Rod aims to take it to schools next year.
He believes there are plenty of young people, like himself, who were "not born to sit down and be quiet".
Michael MacMillan Sculptor & Country Homeware is at 252 Neudorf Road, Upper Moutere. Visitors are encouraged to post a photo with The Last Meter on Facebook and tag the gallery for a weekly chance to win a KiDSMARATHON Foundation T-shirt.
