Where is Snell’s real singlet?
Olympic sporting mystery
Who has it? In a mystery to rival anything Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot was confronted with, New Zealand’s greatest Olympian Peter Snell says he is struggling for leads on where his 1964 gold medalwinning singlet now resides.
Snell was ready to donate his two Tokyo Olympic golds to Te Papa to accompany his black singlet, for which the museum bid $122,500 at Cordy’s auction house in Auckland last week.
Te Papa confirmed yesterday that the deal was off, after the singlet was shown to be fake and made of different material to Snell’s original No 466 with the silver fern.
‘‘If it’s true, then it means the real one is around somewhere. I’ve got no idea where it is. I have none of my apparel left at all; it’s all been donated for good causes for auctions many years ago,’’ Snell said from his home in Dallas, Texas.
Snell told Te Papa representatives last week he believed the singlet was made of nylon or polyester, which raised red flags when the version they bought at auction was found to be cotton. More analysis found it was not the fabric they would expect to see in a Tokyo Olympics singlet.
Snell didn’t retire the singlet after his memorable 800m and 1500m double in Tokyo and said he wore it again in 1965 in his final series of races overseas. He was confident it was still in his possession when he moved to the United States in 1974 but he may well have offered it at auction in New Zealand since then.
‘‘In the course of a trip to New Zealand, I’ve may have given it to Colin Kay for his institute fundraiser, he was always doing that sort of stuff,’’ Snell said.
Kay, a former mayor of Auckland and manager of the New Zealand team at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, helped set up the Peter Snell Institute of Sport to fund promising athletes and auctioned sporting memorabilia to help raise funds for it.
Kay died in 2008 and his son, Tony, doubts he sold such a significant item as Snell’s Olympic singlet.
‘‘From what I recall, and I attended a number of his auctions, my father didn’t auction off any major piece of memorabilia that Peter had donated, like his running shirt.’’
Now working at Mt Albert Grammar, Snell’s old school, Tim Kay was dismayed by yesterday’s news because he’d hoped the famous singlet would return to Auckland after Te Papa bought it.
‘‘After Te Papa bid for that shirt, I was going to contact Peter and see if there was any memorabilia he would consider donating back to his school. We were going to chat to [Te Papa chief executive] Rick Ellis because he’s a MAGS old boy as well, to see whether Te Papa was going to take it on some sort of tour or not. Peter’s shirt is obviously iconic.’’
Snell joked he would search ‘‘high and low’’ around his house, but held out little hope. No one has come forward since the auction claiming they have the real thing, so the case may well be consigned to the unsolved mystery file.
He was amazed and irked that the auctioned version appeared to be such an ‘‘elaborate’’ fake.
Snell’s next decision is whether to give his two gold medals to Te Papa, now it doesn’t have the singlet to accompany them.
‘‘I was very flattered that Te Papa was interested in acquiring the singlet. At the time I thought, ‘Gee, for $120,000 the least I could do would be to provide them with the medals to go along with it’. It may be that still will be the case. I just don’t want to say for sure right now; I’ll talk to the family about it first.’’