SA can learn key aspects of Olympism from the Kiwis
THERE have been many similarities in sport between New Zealand and South Africa.
For example, inquiries were set up in both countries amid outcries over their performances at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
The Kiwis were unhappy with their four medals, which featured just one gold, while South Africa’s two silvers and three bronzes were considered below par after the three golds that had formed the bulk of their five gongs at the 1996 Atlanta Games in the US.
So South Africa blamed structures and merged sporting organisations to create the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee.
New Zealand, on the other hand, have also dabbled on the overarching structures, but they have focused on athlete and coach development.
At the three Games since then, South Africa have won 13 medals, four of them gold — well behind New Zealand’s 27 medals with 12 golds. The latter even broke into the top 15 on the medals table at London 2012.
Professor Ian Culpan, director of the New Zealand Centre for Olympic Studies, says there is no single blueprint for success. “It’s quite debatable whether there’s evidence that policies and practices actually produce medals.
“There’s no Holy Grail,” he said in an interview during the Olympic Studies Conference at the University of Johannesburg this week.
Culpan, who has worked closely with the All Blacks at times, highlighted some practices in New Zealand that are sorely missing in South Africa:
Top sports federations have their own academies, over and above those run by the nation’s umbrella body for high performance sport;
Government funding for high performance sport; ý Coach training; ý Player education; and ý A physical education curriculum at school that incorporates the principles of Olympism.
Culpan said the player education programme had been pioneered by the All Blacks.
“We worked on mental skills, coping with pressure, nutrition, lifestyles and balancing their lifestyles, teaching them how to be role models, and career education,” said Culpan.
The team motto was “better people make better players”.
“We focused on developing these All Blacks as better people,” said Culpan, adding they taught them how to celebrate without getting drunk, getting into fights or womanising.
“For three-and-a-half years [the focus] is development, and in the last six months before a World Cup it becomes performance.”
Players are taught to be leaders. “There’s half a dozen [leaders] . . . there’s a [dispersal] of responsibility away from the management to the players.”
The player education curriculum is not designed to produce gold medallists, but “to get people involved in sport, in the movement culture, to be able to be consumers of it”.
“We are using the principles of Olympism to do that . . . New Zealand has picked up on the importance of providing that holistic approach rather than just a single focus.
“They’re finding the athletes are less susceptible to injury, burnout, [are] more positive.”
Government funding, at least for high performance sport, is also the norm in Germany, an Olympic powerhouse, regularly making the top 10.
But that could change after the public voted against Hamburg bidding to stage the 2024 Olympics, warned Dr Stephan Wassong of the German Sport University Cologne.
“The government gave some extra money for top-level sport with [the Olympics] but there was this public referendum and the citizens said no . . . I think the objectives of the German sport federation have to be redefined,” Dr Wassong said.