Meyer, lifting her country's first track medal following South Africa's 32-year exile from the Olympics, said: 'My silver will inspire the entire nation.

In the 1972 Olympics, athletes from 23 countries won track medals.

So did Jones, who became the only woman to win five track medals at the same Olympics, taking three gold and two bronze in Sydney, Australia.

The Kenterises live in a two-room house that is crammed with their son's track medals.

"All his Packer game balls, all his photos, trophies and track medals were in his mothers's house," Prather said.

He said that when he returned from those Olympics, he threw the medal into a box that held his other track medals and pins.

Her sole major track medal came over 10,000 metres at the 1990 European Athletics Championships, where she was the bronze medallist.

He won his first track medal at the 2010 Ibero-American Championships, taking the gold medal in the 5000 metres.

A feeling of gloom hung over Kenya for months after Kenyan runners failed to win any major track medals in the 1984 Olympics.

It was also the first individual track medal by an Indian woman athlete in the history of Commonwealth Games.