Canoe Racing told to address ‘fresh’ claims
High Performance Sport NZ has instructed Canoe Racing NZ to address ‘‘fresh’’ allegations of mistreatment within its elite women’s squad after a top paddler took her concerns to the government agency.
Stuff understands Aimee Fisher met with High Performance Sport NZ boss Michael Scott and the organisation’s legal counsel on Monday, where she explained her decision to quit the national squad.
The meeting prompted Scott to write to Canoe Racing NZ chief executive Tom Ashley to outline the agency’s concerns, along with its expectations on how the issues should be dealt with.
Fisher, an under-23 world champion and New Zealand’s fastest woman over the 200m distance behind Lisa Carrington, is the sixth woman to leave the high performance squad, headed by Gordon Walker, in the space of 18 months amid allegations of bullying, intimidation and manipulation.
With New Zealand’s K4 medal hopes in Tokyo hanging in the balance, High Performance Sport has been trying to facilitate a mediation process between Fisher and Walker as part of a wider consultation work on the squad’s ‘‘performance and culture’’.
Despite the involvement of the government agency in this process, and repeated attempts by its own staff to instigate a review into the canoe racing environment
since 2018, the allegations raised at the meeting with Fisher were apparently new to senior leadership.
Stuff also raised the allegations with both Canoe Racing NZ and High Performance Sport NZ last month as part of an investigation into the mass exodus from the women’s team.
At the time, Scott said he was concerned to hear some athletes ‘‘had not had a wholly positive experience’’.
It’s understood the ‘‘new’’ allegations relate to Fisher’s treatment in the canoe racing programme, along with an alleged incident that occurred since she left the team inMay.
In a statement, Scott confirmed he had met with a current member of the women’s squad this week, and the paddler shared allegations relating to athlete wellbeing, along with concerns that her complaints had not been acted upon by Canoe Racing NZ.
‘‘High Performance Sport NZ is deeply concerned by this situation,’’ said Scott.
Scott said with the consent of the athlete, High Performance Sport NZ has written to Canoe Racing NZ to share the allegations and outline their expectations on how they will be addressed.
‘‘That includes moving quickly to provide an opportunity for this athlete to speak to an independent person about their concerns.
‘‘We have also requested that Canoe Racing NZ keep us updated on the timing and progress of this process, as well as the findings and any actions to be taken by Canoe Racing NZ in response to concerns raised through the process.’’
Asked what steps Canoe Racing planned to take to address High Performance Sport’s concerns, Ashley pointed to the availability of Sport NZ’s Independent Complaints Mechanism.
‘‘We share HPSNZ’s concern for athlete wellbeing and acknowledge the importance of independent avenues for athletes to raise concerns,’’ he said.
Ashley said feedback from past and current members of the squad had led the organisation to implement several initiatives, including work undertaken by High Performance Sport’s coach accelerator lead Christian Penny to strengthen the team environment and ‘‘learn from the challenges we have faced to date’’.
‘‘This has already kicked off positive change within the programme which sees the current team and coaches in a strong place,’’ said Ashley.