Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

The clock ticking down to the Rio Olympics got me thinking about the Kiwi athletes journeys to the Olympics over the decades.

Today, the New Zealand Olympic team are well travelled athletes who fly around the world with ease.

Not so half a century and more ago, before the advent of today's modern jet aircraft, when travel was by ship with journeys up to a month (or longer) to the other side of the world.

I caught up with a fellow old-timer, at a recent rugby match at the Tauranga Domain, who recalled being a spectator at the 1956 Olympic Games that were hosted in Melbourne, Australia.

What is now a three hour hop across the ditch, was a three and a half day sea journey in 1956.

The Trans Tasman steamer MS Wanganella carried some four hundred passengers across the Tasman Sea in a mix of first and second class berths.

Being a relative youngster, the intrepid Olympic traveler saved his pennies for Melbourne, by travelling second class in the bowels of the ship.

Second class accommodation on the Wanganella wasn't for the faint hearted, with many alighting in Australia, green about the gills.

The Huddart Parker owned steamer had an interesting life that is worth recalling.

Launched before WW2, the Wanganella did sterling duty during hostilities as a hospital ship.

However, it was a journey on the Trans-Tasman route that wrote her name in New Zealand nautical history forever.

On the 19th January 1947, the MS Wanganella ran aground on Barrett's reef in Wellington Harbour, where she remained stuck for 18 days before being re-floated. Barrett's Reef claimed the Wahine some twenty odd years later .

After many years sterling service on the Trans-Tasman route, she was retired in 1962.

However, there was still life in the old girl, with the Wanganella re-emerging in the mid-1960's as accommodation for Manapouri Power Station construction workers, being moored in Dusky Sound.

A long sea journey, also played a part in the story of our countries first Olympic Gold Medalist.

In 1928, Wellington lightweight boxer Ted Morgan was chosen to wear the black singlet at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.

The journey to Amsterdam began with a five week trip on the SS Remuera that left Wellington bound for Southhampton in England.

The good life at sea saw Morgan's weight increase to where he was forced to move up to the welterweight division.

Giving away up to half a stone to his opponents and boxing with a dislocated knuckle didn't stop the kiwi pugilist, who beat Argentinian Landini in the final to claim New Zealand's first Olympic gold medallion.

New Zealand has a proud record in Olympic Games Boxing, winning a trifecta of Olympic medals over the years.

After Ted Morgan won gold in 1928, Kevin Barry was awarded a silver medal at the 1984 Los Angles Games with David Tua claiming Bronze at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

Sadly New Zealand won't have any boxers in Rio, with the kiwi pugilists failing to progress from the Asia/Oceania Olympic qualifying event in China, held during March/April 2016.