Abstract
This chapter explores the politics of remembrance that surround representations of the sporting past in New Zealand. We approach the telling of the sporting past as a contested terrain with varying, selective and at times competing versions of it circulating within the national imagination. These circulate within literature (academic and popular), museums, commercial culture (cereal boxes, TV advertising), and memorials such as statues. Specifically, certain sports, events, figures and achievements are remembered, memorialised, highlighted and celebrated. Others meanwhile are forgotten, ignored or obscured. In this regard, there are questions around whose versions of the sporting past predominate within the national imagination; the answer to which demonstrates that remembering the sporting past is entangled with the broader cultural politics within which sport is imbricated. We explore these issues by looking at three examples from popular histories of sport and memorialisation: the 1976 Montreal Olympic boycott; the 1981 Springbok tour; and the 1907–1908 All Golds, to reveal the deeper significance and entanglements of representations of the sporting past.