When the first ever Commonwealth Games gold medal for archery was presented in 1982, the winner remained on the ground rather than the podium.

Neroli Fairhall did not know if she would fit on the dais but the size problem was not a matter of weight and girth.

Fairhall was paraplegic, and competed from a wheelchair. She was the first wheelchair athlete to win an able-bodied discipline at any major sporting event, not just the Commonwealth Games.

Athletes with disabilities had won Olympic medals before.

The American-German gymnast George Eyser was run over by a train as a boy and lost a leg, but still won six medals, three of them gold, in St Louis in 1904.

The amputee Hungarian water polo player Oliver Halassy was a triple medallist in the 1920s and 1930s.

Another Hungarian, marksman Karoly Takacs, blew up his shooting hand, his right, with a grenade, then learned to shoot left-handed and won gold in 1948 and 1952.

And Lis Hartel, the Danish rider who was paralysed below both knees by polio, won dressage silvers in 1952 and 1956 and had to be lifted on to the dais for the medal ceremonies.

As the 20th century drew to its end, though, nobody had ever competed, never mind won a medal, from a wheelchair at the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games.

Fairhall, who was also the first athlete to take part in both the Paralympics and Olympics - in 1980 and 1984 - won gold in Brisbane in a dramatic finish.

The New Zealander needed three 10-pointers from her last three arrows. "Come on, Neroli, do it!" she exhorted herself.

She did it, to win on countback from the Northern Ireland teenager, Janet Yates.

"After that it was all a bit of a blur," she said.

"Suddenly there were all these New Zealanders there behind me saying 'you've done it!'

Neroli Fairhall made Commonwealth Games history in archery ©NZOC/PNZ
Neroli Fairhall made Commonwealth Games history in archery ©NZOC/PNZ

"When it came to the ceremony, I was always wary of being lifted into the air, so I sat on the ground."

Fairhall, who had a lifelong love of horses, was confined to a wheelchair after a motorbike accident near her home in Christchurch in 1969.

She lay injured for nearly a day before a passing motorist spotted her.

Despite her ordeal she liked to drive fast, and would often overtake team-mates in her Ford Capri on the way to matches.

After trying and failing at shot, discus, and wheelchair sprinting, Fairhall took up archery.

It was tough but she strengthened her arm and stomach muscles by swimming four times a week, and within a few years she was competing at international level.

People would sometimes complain that it was easier for her to shoot from a sitting position, to which Fairhall's reply was: "I wouldn't know, I've never shot standing up."

Fairhall was selected to represent New Zealand at the 1980 Olympics but missed those Games, to her lifelong regret, when her country boycotted Moscow.

She competed at the Paralympics in The Netherlands that year, setting national and Paralympic records.

When Fairhall made it to the Olympics four years later, in Los Angeles, she finished 35th, a disappointing result.

She would have performed better, she felt, without the constant media attention, something she never liked.

In the early days after her accident, Fairhall felt she was given little or no help in learning how to cope as a paraplegic.

Later in life, Fairthall was a frequent visitor to hospital patients who had suffered serious injuries.

Having been awarded an MBE for services to archery, Fairhall retired from competition in 2001 with "a worn-out left shoulder" and continued to coach and encourage archers.

She died in 2006.

Ruth Dyson, a New Zealand Government Minister, said Fairhall was "an inspirational woman for all New Zealanders who did what many thought was impossible, competing against the best in the Commonwealth to win gold".

"Neroli was an example of how a disabled person can overcome the low expectations of others and achieve excellence," she added.