These young Kiwis deserve a bigger piece of the pie
Our Winter Olympians could do so much more with a bit of cash, writes Olivia Caldwell.
IGETTY IMAGES T is hard to decide whether New Zealand’s 2018 Winter Olympic campaign has been a success. It’s not a golden success, but it will be known as a success of the less valuable bronze variety.
A campaign led by two 16-yearolds, Nico Porteous and Zoi Sadowski Synnott, who both picked up bronze this week in the ski halfpipe and snowboard big air respectively, bringing our sports mad country to a momentary standstill and for once it wasn’t over rugby.
It was a real life fairytale for these two Wanaka teenagers and brought out the best of our sports audience – because how can you not like these kids who, as it turned out, were the most surprised of anyone when they landed their ‘‘dub corks’’ and ‘‘dub cats’’. It doesn’t take a love for sport or sporting knowledge to be happy for them and their success.
But what about the fourths, fifths and top 10 finishers of our Kiwi Olympic team? There were many, coming tantalisingly close to having their names written into Kiwi sporting folklore.
Unfortunately the fickle nature of sport and the nature of our beloved Kiwi sports followers, these athletes won’t be remembered for at least another four years when they give it another crack in Beijing.
The one exception may be speed skater Peter Michael, as his mullet might be enough to get him recognised the same way Super Rugby’s the Honey Badger’s good looks have served him.
However it could be argued that given a bigger piece of the pie, we could have been seeing snowboarder Carlos Garcia Knight, speed skaters Shane Dobbin and Reyon Kay, Michael, alpine skiers Adam Barwood and Willis Feasey or ski cross’s Jamie Prebble stepping up on to the podium. We will never know.
This year, Snow Sports New Zealand received just $2 million for its Olympic campaign (up 25 per cent on Sochi 2014) from High Performance New Zealand (HPNZ).
That $2 million is from a $35 million core investment programme for 2018.
The Winter Olympics is arguably a bigger international event than the Commonwealth Games, which will be hosted by the Gold Coast in April. However, when you look at the list or priorities from HPNZ this year the top of the list is flooded with New Zealand’s best medal contenders for the Gold Coast tournament.
The $35 million dollar investment has tiers which indicate the order of importance and the amount of money invested. Yachting, rowing, cycling and athletics all sit in tier one; equestrian, canoe racing, rugby sevens (men and womens) and netball in tier two, and women’s hockey in tier three.
Snow sports and Paralympics NZ, where New Zealand is likely to get a medal, are in a targeted other group. The New Zealand Olympic Committee is given a further $75,000 for investment. Paralympics NZ will receive an additional $25,000 one-off investment to support the games delivery for the Paralympic Winter Games.
HPNZ senior advisor Paul Farrell says the investment criteria is based on past performance, future potential, quality of the campaigns and individual sport context.
The New Zealand men’s sevens team did not perform at the Rio Olympics and have been wobbly since, however it received $900,000 for 2018 alone. Netball is not a part of the summer Olympics, yet received $1.2 million.
Rowing ($5m), cycling ($4m) and yachting ($3.8m) are all understandable given our success there. But these are all singular sports, while the ‘‘snow sports’’ umbrella covers anything on ice and snow, so Snow Sports NZ then has to prioritise between those.
This meant both Porteous and Sadowski Synnott benefitted with extra training facilities such as a progression landing bag and an acrobag based in the Wanaka hub.
However, the fourth placed speed skaters have moved to Europe in order to use the training facilities there. No funding.
Speed skater Michael is from Palmerston North and he said ahead of the men’s team pursuit finals it was hard to make his sport fulltime and it would be good if there were training facilities at home.
‘‘It’s always difficult, it’s slowly starting to come together. It would be cool if we had some facilities in New Zealand. I’m really hooked on it so that’s definitely a positive.’’
So while two sweet 16-year-olds really captured a nation and collected New Zealand’s second and third medals after a 26 year hiatus. You cannot help but wonder about the ‘‘what ifs’’ and the ‘‘nearly theres’’ of this 2018 New Zealand Olympic Games campaign. Roll on Beijing.