This spiky item helped a relatively unknown New Zealand athlete seize gold, and instant fame, at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

This shoe doesn't come with the bells and whistles of modern running shoes - there's no foam cushioning, titanium cooling spheres or fancy flex grooves.

But take a closer look and you'll notice the inspired and innovative touches that make this shoe so special.

It tells the story of one athlete's spectacular sporting success, and loyalty to the shoes his coach made him. But it's also part of a larger story about New Zealand's sporting and national identity and our ability to improvise and modify in the face of competition. And arguably the greatest day in our sporting history.

In this week's episode, we turn our attention to the shoes that Peter Snell was wearing when he won the 800 metres at the Rome Olympic Games in 1960 at the age of 21.

Snell gifted 14 pieces from his collection to Te Papa in 2017, including two Olympic gold medals and one of his famous shoes.

But, where's the other shoe?

It turns out Snell donated the left shoe to Tauranga Girls' College in the mid-60s.

"The left shoe is on top of a block of rimu, it's a beautiful trophy, and it lives in the principal's office at Tauranga Girls College," says former principal of the college, Pauline Cowens.

Snell wanted to encourage competition between Tauranga Girls and Rotorua Girls High School in athletics.

"What he didn't probably appreciate was how it would make the whole history stay alive.

"Because every single year when the two schools do their two sports exchanges and we compete for the trophy we revisit Peter Snell, we revisit the Olympic movement and we revisit the importance of sport," says Cowens.

Peter Snell sprints to win the 800m final on 2 September, 1960, during the Olympic Games in Rome.

The shoe was made especially for Snell by brothers Arthur and Wally Lydiard. In fact, Arthur Lydiard's signature can be seen on the side in gold letters.

Lydiard is considered a ground-breaking athletics coach due to his revolutionary endurance training methods for his students. His earlier training as a shoemaker is less known.

"I think it was the pattern of training and the distances, the sheer distances that he made Peter run - and Arthur himself ran in Auckland - the training was really intensive," Te Papa's head of New Zealand and Pacific Cultures Bronwyn Labrum says.

Lydiard's students included not only Snell, but Murray Halberg and Barry Magee…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details