The Murray Halberg Trophy

This mounted shoe trophy is one of two named ‘The Murray Halberg Trophy’ which were competed for by members of the Auckland Baptist Harrier Club. This particular trophy was awarded between 1966 and 2011, initially for runners under 16 years old with the 'Fastest Time' in the Murray Halberg Trophy Race, and then later for time trials (5km and 10km).

The adidas shoe once belonged to Sir Murray Halberg (1933-2022, New Zealand). It was one of several pairs of adidas shoes he wore around the time of the Rome Olympics in 1960. As a prominent and famous distance runner, the Auckland Baptist Harrier Club approached Halberg in 1966 to ask whether he could give the club a pair of his running shoes for their trophies, and he obliged with this pair.

Halberg wore adidas shoes for both training and racing, as did many other athletes. Adidas revolutionised running shoes in the 1950s. Halberg found adidas shoes to be more comfortable and enduring. Initially he bought his own running shoes, but eventually adidas gave him shoes once he had become a top athlete.

The mounting of sports shoes into trophies was not unusual. In 1963, Sir Peter Snell gave one of his shoes from the Rome Olympics to Tauranga Girls' College as a mounted trophy for sporting competitions between Tauranga and Rotorua Girls' College. The trophy was named 'The Shoe' (like 'The Boot' trophy in inter-school rugby given by All Black Don Clarke three years earlier), and is still competed for.

Sir Murray Halberg

Sir Murray Halberg (ONZ, MBE, Blake Medal) is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant national figures for his athletic career, for re-inventing the New Zealand Sportsman of the Year Awards as the Halberg Awards, and for founding the Halberg Foundation (1963) to assist physically disabled New Zealanders to participate in sport and recreation. He was knighted in 1987, and appointed to New Zealand’s highest honour, the Order of New Zealand (ONZ) in 2008.

Halberg’s greatest athletic success was winning the 5000 meters at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960. He first competed at the Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954 and the Olympics in Melbourne in 1956. He won the three miles at the Cardiff and Perth Empire Games (1958, 1962). In 1958 he was the first New Zealander to run a mile in under four minutes (in Dublin) and was awarded Sportsman of the Year. In 1961, he broke three world records in less than three weeks.

His successes were all the more remarkable after being badly injured while playing rugby at 17, which left him with a withered left arm.

Sir Murray was a pupil of the master coach Arthur Lydiard who was responsible for the finest era in New Zealand athletics from 1951-66, including the international highlights of Halberg's win of the three-mile event at the Cardiff Empire Games in 1958, Sir Peter Snell's 800m win followed quickly by Halberg's 5000m win at the Rome Olympics in 1960, and Snell's double gold at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964.