Billy Savidan was a New Zealand stonemason whose journey to Hamilton, Ontario for the inaugural Empire Games in 1930 took many weeks. His races were in August but because of the difficulties of long-distance travel at the time, he did not return home until October.

Savidan desperately wanted to win the six miles and the three miles - the Empire equivalents of the 10,000 metres and 5,000m - to prove the New Zealand selectors wrong. They had overlooked him for the 1928 Olympics despite him being national champion at a mile and three miles.

The NZ Amateur Athletics Association had snubbed him again in selecting the team for the Empire Games. First, they insisted that he or his Auckland club pay all his expenses. Second, they did not confirm his place in the team until 24 hours before their boat left for Canada.

The six miles, on the opening day, was a race of high drama. Savidan had been in the new Civic Stadium, packed with nearly 20,000 people, for hours and he was uncomfortably hot. Before the race, he had stood in the open with 400 other athletes listening to the worthies make their speeches on this famous day - August 16, 1930.

There were no races in New Zealand longer than three miles and there was no cinder track either. Savidan had never raced on such a surface as the one in Hamilton, nor over this distance. He had plenty of stamina, built up not just by running but by his daily walks of at least five miles. His preparations had featured a time trial over six miles when it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. 

Savidan was, he said, "all bone and muscle" by the time of the Games. But he was not prepared for what happened, nor could he remember much about it afterwards.

He led throughout, crossed the line well clear of his rivals and stopped, taking in the crowd's cheers. He was about to step off the track when a shout hit him "like a bombshell", he told the New Zealand writer Norman Harris many years later. 

"Another lap! Another lap!" somebody was shouting at him. Then the gun fired - for the last lap. Savidan was unaware that the lap steward, in quickly lifting the number three to reveal the two, had shifted both numbers together and prematurely exposed the figure one. When Savidan thought he was on the last lap he actually had two to go. 

Savidan could not wait to argue, but he could scarcely move. It was, Harris wrote, "like a nightmare - his shoes had huge lead weights in them, he felt sick and weak, almost in tears with the shock and injustice of having to run an extra lap when he had already finished".

The crowd rose to their feet, shouting for him to keep moving. An English runner, Ernie Harper, had been behind by 150 yards but was closing and, if Savidan faltered, the New Zealander would be caught. 

Harris continued: "He was struggling like a drowning man in heavy surf, he overbalanced backwards, swayed forward and almost toppled over, staggered badly and weaved right over to the outside of the track.

"The crowd were in a frenzy and shouting themselves hoarse, many of them leaping over the fence on to the edge of the track. He gathered himself at last and began to beat his way down the straight. He was going to do it, and the crowd broke loose with a roaring ovation all the way down the straight until he had broken through the tape."

Savidan was clearly distressed as he crossed the winning line. His team-mates helped him around the track to have his photo taken with Harper and Tom Evenson, the Englishmen who finished second and third, and supported him at the medal ceremony.

"Amid great enthusiasm," reported The Times in England the following day, "Savidan took his place on the dais while the band played and the winners' flags fluttered in the breeze to close a memorable day."

Savidan, in shock, remembered nothing of this. He had to be walked round the track again by his team-mates for half an hour before he was able to sign the paperwork confirming his Canadian and Empire Games six-mile records.

After briefly losing consciousness in the dressing room, he recovered and said: "I think I'm going mad."

That race took its toll. In the three miles, for which he was favourite, Savidan was unable to finish.

When he did make it to the Olympic Games two years later, in Los Angeles, he suffered the disappointment of finishing fourth in both the 5,000m and 10,000m.