Injection of money for women
At a glance
High Performance Sport New Zealand has announced its funding plans for 2020 – and women’s cricket and netball are the big winners.
Netball’s funding has increased from $1.50 million to $1.88m a year for each of the next four years in preparation for the
2022 Commonwealth Games and
2023 World Cup.
Cricket investment of $500,000 a year shifts from the Black Caps to the White Ferns for the next two years to support preparation for the 2021 ICC Cricket World Cup, to be hosted in New Zealand, and the 2022 Commonwealth Games, which will feature women’s T20 cricket.
There is also an increase for rugby league – with the Kiwis getting $450,000 (up from $350,000 in
2019) but funding for softball has been slashed, with the Black Sox men’s team down from $350,000 to $200,000 and the White Sox national women’s squad down from $30,000 to zero.
The Black Sox – seven-time world champions between 1976 and 2017 – have paid the price for a fourth placing at the 2019 world championship in Prague where they missed a medal for the first time in 39 years.
In December 2018, HPSNZ provided all tier 1, 2 and 3 targeted summer Olympic and Paralympic sports with a two-year investment commitment, based on performance and available funding, to provide more certainty around preparations for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
HPSNZ chief executive Michael Scott said there would be no changes to those levels of funding, with sports generally tracking well in the lead up to 2020.
‘‘This approach is designed to give Olympic and Paralympic sports more certainty on which to base their transition from the Tokyo to Paris Olympic cycles and their preparations through the Paris cycle,’’ Scott said.
Scott said HPSNZ was ‘‘delighted to be able to give greater support to elite women’s sport’’, citing the the extra investment in netball and women’s cricket.
He said investment decisions were based on the same four criteria for all sports: past performance; future potential; quality of the high performance programme and campaigns; and the individual sport context. HPSNZ had had detailed performance discussions with national sporting organisations (NSOs).
HPSNZ will make further changes to its investment process over the next 12 months, beginning in March 2020. At that time, an investment equivalent to 60-80 per cent of current funding levels will be confirmed for targeted Summer Olympic and Paralympic sports for the four years of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic cycle.