ATLANTA 1996 KIEREN Perkins was not supposed to win.
He may have been the 1500m champion in Barcelona, but come Atlanta, the then 22-year-old was struggling with injury and illness. He was so horribly out of form that he only scraped into the 1500m final and was relegated to lane eight as the slowest qualifier. 
So low was his confidence that Perkins initially did not want even to contest the final.
"By the time I got midway through that heat, I had decided I wasn't good enough," Perkins said "If I couldn't win the heat, I wasn't going to win the final, and if I couldn't win the final then better not to be there - just to disappear quietly into the sunset and pray people remembered the time before and not remember this one." Fellow Australian Daniel Kowalski qualified fastest and was the man to beat.But Perkins produced arguably the greatest Australian performance in Olympic history. He led from start to finish, burning off Kowalski, who was left six seconds behind for the silver medal.