Yes. These new stars are here to stay
After covering the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and enjoying it so much, of course I was going to stick my hand up and argue ‘‘yes, we should take snow sports seriously’’. At the end of the games, New Zealand finished 26th on the medal table, tied with Spain.
That was due to the deeds of Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous. The 16-year-olds from Wanaka grabbed medal in the snowboard big air and the freeski halfpipe. But unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last week, you already know this.
The teenagers are the first Kiwi Winter Olympic medals since alpine ski racer Annelise Coberger won silver in 1992 at Albertville, France.
Along with the two bronze medals, the Kiwi team also had three fourth placings and a fifth. That amounts to six top-five finishes, four more than in Sochi in 2014. So the evidence is clear, we are improving.
Eight years ago in Vancouver not one Kiwi finished in the top 10 in an event and I ammighty sure no-one really batted an eyelid because Kiwis don’t really care about snow sports, do we?
Well, actually we do. Every year our skifields fill up with punters across the country and NZSki doesn’t look like it is going under financially. Kiwis are interested and you only need to look at the numbers who followed the Winter Olympics the past two weekss. Kiwis care all right.
So in this respect it is time for our sports funders – Sport New Zealand and High Performance New Zealand – to share the love.
Despite the Winter Olympics rolling round just once every four years and being of far bigger significance than the Commonwealth Games, HPNZ funded Snow Sports NZ just $2 million ahead of the games this year. That $2 million is from a $35 million core investment programme for 2018, which is a clear indication of where snow sports sit in the pecking order.
In clear-tiered categories, snow sports sat behind yachting, rowing, cycling, athletics, equestrian, canoe racing, rugby sevens and netball. HPNZ investment criteria is based on past performance, future potential, quality of the campaigns and individual sport context.
If this is the case, we should be seeing a bigger investment across all snow sports including the ‘‘nearly there’’ sports such as speed skating where the Kiwis grabbed a fourth and a fifth. If we cared a little more, these could have turned into medals.
Another reason we need to start caring about snow sports and its athletes is because they give back.
The difference between our snow sports athletes and our more professionally recognised sports such as rugby, is that these athletes are ‘‘blown away’’ by support, they don’t hide away from the public eye, they answer media calls and they don’t have a media liaison officer acting like a bodyguard.
Caring a little more about this type of athlete isn’t just going to get New Zealand on the podium, it might set a new standard of what New Zealand sport is actually about.