Duck Shooting Season

So our Minister of Sport, Trevor Mallard, believes "some Kiwi athletes have shown they lack the "mental toughness" needed to clinch a sporting victory". That will make interesting reading for our athletes as they pick up the paper at the airport when getting off the plane. Having been recently introduced to the role of parenting, I've woken up to the fact that when someone doesn't quite achieve what they set out to achieve, the answer is not to put the boot in and call them a "failure", but to work out what went wrong so that next time they try to do something worthwhile, they have a greater chance of success.

Even if the comment is true (which I don't think it is), it's the sort of comment that should be kept in the subconcious and not splashed around as a headline. It's a shocker.

I didn't hear the interview, but apparently Nick Hill said this morning that the medal target was set by the sports themselves. What utter bullshit. Going back to the Herald on Sunday article last December, we were told:

"The figure was calculated by Sparc's high performance chief Marty Toomey, in consultation with Dave Currie ... The number is taken from performances over the past two years that rank an athlete or team in the top three of the Commonwealth. Sparc has identified 55 athletes or teams in this category and has multiplied that by a 70-80 per cent conversion rate to come up with 45."

This guy is doing a serious exercise in arse covering and the more he says, the more inconsistencies he shows. He should piss off back to the energy industry where he came from.