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Under Alert Level 1, the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame is now OPEN. Our hours are 10am to 3pm (Wednesdays to Sundays). We are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays (open by appointment only on these days).
Jean Batten
Inducted in 1990
One of the world’s celebrated aviation pioneers of the 1930s, Batten forsook a promising career as a concert pianist to find her glory in the sky.
Sporting Category:
  • Aviation
She and her mother moved from New Zealand to Britain in 1930 where Batten immediately pursued her ambition of learning to fly.

In 1934, she flew solo from England to Australia in 14 days, 22½ hours, shattering Amy Johnson’s record by four days and becoming a world celebrity.

She became the first woman to make the return journey to England and followed that up with a world record flight from England to Brazil, at the same time becoming the first woman to fly the South Atlantic solo.

Batten in 1936 made the first direct solo flight from England to New Zealand and the return to England from Australia was a record for pilots of either sex and she was also the first person to simultaneously hold England-Australia solo records in both directions.

Batten lived alone in later life in the Canary Islands and died in Spain in 1982.

Sporting Spotlight

Billy Murphy

(1862 - 1939)

His proper name was Thomas William Murphy but he was known more as “Torpedo Billy”, the only New Zealand-born boxer (he was born in Auckland) to hold a world boxing title.
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New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame
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Dunedin 9016
Otago
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