New Zealand sport’s year of reckoning
In a nondescript meeting room at the Millennium Institute – a hub for New Zealand’s sporting elite on Auckland’s North Shore – an athlete is finding out her worth.
It is a couple of months after the 2012 London Olympics, and the athlete and the high performance director she reported to have met up to review her Games campaign and discuss future plans.
After a disappointing performance in London, the athlete has fresh motivation and has come to the meeting armed with a gameplan for the next four years, which she believes will put her in a strong position to fight for a spot on the podium come the Rio Olympics.
Within 10 seconds she realises the high performance director had other ideas.
He opens the meeting with ‘‘so, how old are you now?’’ directing it in a way that was more a suggestion than a question.
‘‘From the outset, I was made to feel like complete s…,’’ she says.
‘‘He had no interest in what my goals or ambitions were and helping me achieve them, it was just like ‘OK, time to move on’.’’
Blindsided by the news, the athlete walked out of the meeting and fled straight into the bush outside the facility.
For the next hour she walked aimlessly around the North Shore suburbs completely broken after the sudden unravelling of a sporting future she’d just moments earlier been so positive about.
Despite the lack of support from her national body at a time when, in the wake of a disappointing Games campaign, she needed support, encouragement and renewed focus more than ever, the athlete stuck with it, determined to make the Rio Games.
The high performance director would later often refer to the athlete, who had just entered her 30s, as ‘Grandma’ and ask ‘‘isn’t it about time you had a baby?’’
Another woman in the programme was also regularly asked what her ‘‘family plans’’ were.
‘‘We were made to feel like we offered absolutely no value to the system,’’ she says.
‘‘They didn’t care about developing us as athletes and making sure we had what we needed to perform. It was like we were an inconvenience to them for wanting to represent New Zealand.’’
The athlete, who has since retired, did not want to be named as she is still worried speaking out about her treatment and the culture of the organisation will limit her career opportunities in what is a small industry. This week, though, she finally felt seen.
Reading through Stephen Cottrell’s review into athletes’ rights and welfare, released on Thursday, the athlete could only smile wryly as she recognised many of her own experiences in the Sport NZ commissioned report.
The 120-page report details clear evidence of problems emerging in elite sport in New Zealand because of ‘‘a lack of genuine focus on athlete rights and welfare’’.
Cottrell observed how high performance sport environments are breeding an unhealthy culture. He wrote of athletes who described being ‘‘thrown under the bus’’ after one poor performance; coaches under pressure to deliver targets and feeling like they have a ‘‘noose around their neck’’; a high performance funding model that overwhelmingly prioritises short-term performance goals; and a culture where poor standards of behaviour are accepted by those considered critical to the success of a team or a programme.
‘‘Many NSOs assert that they adopt an athlete-centred approach to high performance and acknowledge that this is best practice. However, the evidence I have seen suggests that even these sports are still not yet at the point where they consistently put an athlete’s development and wellbeing at the centre of what they do,’’ Cottrell said in a summary of his key findings.
His damning report comes after a year of reckoning for New Zealand sport.
Several major sports – notably cycling, football, hockey and rowing – are dealing with the fallout from high profile allegations of bullying and athlete welfare breaches in their elite programmes, prompting these sports to hold their own reviews.
The headline-grabbing scandals have kicked off a philosophical debate in sport – one that is also playing out internationally, most notably in the UK, where administrators are calling for a radical overhaul of UK Sport’s funding model following several athlete welfare scandals.
Many believe High Performance Sport NZ’s obsession with medal targets has led to a ‘‘win at all costs’’ mentality in these organisations that rely on government funding for its programmes to survive.
But there is a counter argument emerging from those who think New Zealand sport is at risk of becoming too sanitised. They say high performance sport by its very nature is tough and uncompromising and if athletes are handled with kid gloves, it will lead to a ‘‘dumbing down’’ of the programme.
Michael Heron QC, who led the review into Cycling NZ, noted these competing ideas in his final report.
‘‘Throughout the review and most often in the context of bullying, the issue of the distinction between demanding high performance and bullying was raised. Many athletes, coaches and support staff said . . . what they observed was consistent with the high performance environment [demanding, tough, confronting, challenging and ‘hard-arse’ were some of the descriptions used],’’ Heron wrote.
‘‘I am very conscious to take care to distinguish between demanding high performance standards and bullying.’’
It’s an attitude Cottrell, too, encountered in his research.
He spoke with more than 100 athletes, coaches, sports administrators and other stakeholders over the course of the review, and concluded: ‘‘Athlete welfare and performance should be seen as mutually reinforcing, not in conflict with each other. It is not acceptable or necessary for a sport to achieve, or to set out to achieve, one at the expense of the other.’’
As one athlete Cottrell interviewed noted – ‘‘it’s not OK for a government funded system to leave people broken’’.
‘‘Athlete welfare and performance should be seen as mutually reinforcing, not in conflict with each other.’’ Stephen Cottrell