Sporting dreams
Sky Stadium hosted its last sporting event on March 15 when the Phoenix overcame the Melbourne Victory 3-0. Harmon says he has no idea when the floodlights will illuminate once more. That uncertainty impacts ground staff, security contractors, food and drink vendors, and merchandise suppliers.
‘‘It’s hard to plan when you don’t know what you’re planning for. We don’t know whether this is one month, two months, six months and I suppose the concern after that is going to be what is the confidence level for events beyond that,’’ says Harmon.
‘‘This was to be a really busy time of the year for us, between now and the end of May we expected to host 16 event days. It’s really disappointing for us, particularly with the Wellington Phoenix given how well they have gone this year, it was looking increasingly likely that we were going to be hosting a final in Wellington, but that is unfortunately not going to come to pass.’’
NZ Rugby, as the central pillar in New Zealand sport’s shaky tower, now appears to be bearing much of the weight of those outside forces.
The organisation’s rush to establish a makeshift domestic competition among the Kiwi franchises to fill the void left by the inevitable cancellation of the Super Rugby season is in part a business decision for NZ Rugby. But just as importantly it will ensure NZ Rugby meets an urgent need to supply content for rights holders Sky, whom the national body has an equity stake in.
The shutdown of competitions and events around the world has dealt a savage blow to the broadcaster, which staked its future on hoovering up sports rights. Now Sky is unable to provide subscribers the content they signed up for, the mass cancellation of sport could soon equal a mass cancellation of Sky Sport subscriptions.
Sky’s shares closed at 26.5 cents on Friday, giving it a market capitalisation of just under $120 million – well short of the reported $500m it paid for NZ Rugby broadcast rights over the next four years.
There could be worse news to come, with the All Blacks and Black Ferns internationals in July expected to be canned. Sky’s other big ticket item for 2020 – the Tokyo Olympic
Games – is also looking increasingly unlikely to go ahead, despite the insistence of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that it will.
There is an element of playing for time in its approach, with the IOC executive and representatives from its member nations repeating ad nauseam this week there is still four months to go and there’s no need to make any ‘‘drastic decisions’’ yet.
What the IOC considers ‘‘drastic’’, others consider logical.
Even if spectators opt to bypass the Games, more than 250,000 people from around the world are accredited for the event, including athletes, coaches, team officials, medical staff, umpires, judges, media, broadcasting operations staff, IOC members, sports executives and sponsors.
To bring all these people together in one place for three weeks in the midst of a global health crisis is inconceivable.
For as long as the war between reason and money rages, athletes are left stranded in an in-between world.
They’ve been instructed to keep training and prepare as they would were the Olympics going ahead. But there is nothing typical about their preparation.
Key qualifying events have been moved or cancelled, leaving athletes and their sporting federations scrambling to find other competition opportunities in order to meet the Games standard.
The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC), meanwhile, has been forced to hastily rewrite its selection policies to reflect the evershifting schedules.
There are concerns, too, that as the government’s advice around public gatherings and social distancing becomes more stringent, athletes will soon be forced to decide between going training and their personal wellbeing.
Some athletes overseas don’t even have a choice. With parts of Europe under strict lockdown, athletes are unable to train.
NZOC spokeswoman Ashley Abbott says the organisation is ensuring they support athletes and their sports in any way they can.
‘‘The overall impact of moving things around is really tough on athletes,’’ says Abbott. ‘‘The message for them at this time is to make sure they are focusing on the right things, and it is really easy to get distracted when we’re facing all this disruption, so we’re asking athletes to focus on the things they can control and make sure they’re really anchored.
‘‘As athletes they are used to overcoming adversity. We’re encouraging them to draw on their resilience as we try to step through these challenging times.’’
But sport isn’t just what we see on telly. Grassroots sport came to a virtual standstill this week as well after Sport NZ encouraged national sporting organisations to take a co-ordinated approach to ensure the community was not receiving mixed messages.
All major winter sporting codes have postponed their seasons at junior and club level, while School Sports NZ has also halted all major events, including rowing’s Maadi Cup. Many indoor sports centres that operate on a pay-to-play model have also opted to close their doors due to the public health risks.
These closures come at a far greater social cost, rather than an economic one.
Ihave been involved in one combat sport or another for 27 years, from tae kwon do to boxing, kickboxing to muay thai, and even tried my hand at MMA once; an adventure which left me a guest of the Japanese medical system after getting knocked out in a cage fight in Kyoto.
Now that I have retired from fighting, I have moved into coaching and have worked with beginners through to some of New Zealand’s best strikers.
As an insecure kid in a dysfunctional home environment, martial arts provided me with the healthy outlets I needed to navigate the difficult years of being a teenager and young adulthood.
With slogans on T-shirts and tattoos on my body, I pay homage every day to the fact that getting into fighting literally saved my life. I would not have made it out if it had not been for martial arts.
Where I could have gone down the road of alcohol and drug use, crime and generally selfdestructive behaviours, I instead poured my attention into training. I spent untold hours running at 6am before school as a boy, then before work as a young man. Before I found my calling, I could not wait to finish the day at whatever deadend job I was doing and make it to the gym. Five or six days a week I trained twice a day. The selfdiscipline that I developed – first as an amateur and then a professional fighter – I took into my studies when I decided to return to university as an adult.
I never applied myself at high school, but what I learned in the gym about dedication and commitment I took with me into higher education, and was successful in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. Now that I am