Survivor wins gold
Cancer survivor and six-time Olympian Santiago Lange, of Argentina, won the gold medal in the Nacra 17 mixed catamaran yesterday with crew Cecilia Carranza Saroli. The 54-year-old Lange is the oldest competitor in sailing at Rio and his sons, Yago and Klaus, are sailing for Argentina in the 49er skiff class. He and Saroli won the gold by one point over Jason Waterhouse and Lisa Darmanin, of Australia. Thomas Zajac and Tanja Frank, of Austria, won the bronze. It is more money than any other sport bar rowing, which was given $32m and produced three medals. New Zealand track riders managed three fourth placings, two in the team pursuit and one yesterday by omnium rider Lauren Ellis. The third tier one sport, yachting, received $18.3m in the four years, but have managed one gold and one bronze, with prospects of two more during the regatta. Cycling high performance boss Mark Elliott won’t dwell on the elephant in the velodrome — New Zealand’s poor return at the Rio Olympics and how it may affect future funding.
BikeNZ were expecting a solid medal return out of Rio, but instead, with the BMX and mountain biking to come, it has only a silver to the world champion men’s team sprint to show for their efforts.
There have been three fourth placings — to gutsy omnium rider Lauren Ellis yesterday morning, and the two pursuit teams, who were well beaten in their bronze medal rides.
No sport other than rowing has received more Government money in the last four years. Elliott won’t get into money talk while the Games are still on.
“It’s early days and we need to work through that,” Elliott said.
He admitted fourth placings are “pretty hard to stomach”.
“None of us are happy with fourths. We came to get medals,” he added.
“The thing we have been outdone by is that a lot of medals have been won here by athletes who have been to three or four Olympics. For a lot of our guys this is their first Olympics and they’ll be here in the future. We have to look long term.”
New Zealand’s disappointing keirin form — Eddie Dawkins gone early; Sam Webster out in the second round — needs attention, Elliott admitted. “We’ve got to work out why the guys haven’t had a bit of sting in the last couple of days. They’ve rested up, been fresh but we just haven’t seen that ability to generate power so we have a little bit of work to understand that.”
But there will be hard looks in December when High Performance Sport NZ funding is revealed.
If their funding is kept at the same level, or even increased, and if there is no financial acknowledgement of other sports, such as shooting and