Still in Nappies

Judging by the events from the past few days, NZ sporting commentators and some of the public have a lot of growing up to do. As the medal haul from the Commonwealth Games dried up faster than a creek in Central Otago in the middle of the summer, out come the doomsday merchants:

Tony Veitch (Radio Sport):

“But they have spent, SPARC, 30 million dollars over the last 12 months to ensure this team would perform, our best-funded team to the Commonwealth Games. So have we done poorly? Are we underperforming?”

Andrew Saville (Radio Sport):

“Huge amounts of money, yes, have been spent on athletes, and officials, at these games, and some teams have not been up to scratch. It’s not good enough.”

That was on Monday morning. As the week has worn on, the lack of success has become mainstream media news and everyone is putting the boot in. Try this from Peter Cresswell whose knowledge on sports probably equates to mine on architecture:

"Congratulations to the sixteen medal winners. To the rest of you, may I have my money back please?

With $30 million of taxpayers' money spent on making NZ atheletes beneficiaries -- that's $1.875 million per medal -- does it even begin to look like it was in any way money "well spent"? And have we got a right to complain about atheletes' performances when we've been forced to pay for them, and the money appears to have been pissed up against a wall?"

Go into any NZ sports forum (not that there are that many) and you get well-informed comments such as this:

"What i object to is my f**king tax dollars being spent on the likes of Chantal Brunner who is not up to it"

Oh dear. At this point, I'll direct my four regular readers to an article my twin brother wrote on Sportsfreak. Every time a NZ team shows signs of underperforming at a Commonwealth or Olympic Games, people are quick to put the boot in and question the use of public funds for the athletes.

I don't have a problem with criticism of a sporting performance that is below par. In New Zealand, we have developed that to a fine art - possibly because we have a lot of practice at it.

However I am seriously FUCKED OFF that because there is some use of public funds in high performance sport, when things go a bit pear-shaped the sad cockroaches come crawling out of the cupboard and complain about the amount and/or use of public money so these athletes can go swanning off on a sports holiday to get pissed and maybe put in a sporting performance on the side. I guess when my stepson fails School C (or whatever it is now) in a couple of year's time, I should follow their lead and complain bitterly about the use of taxpayer's money to fund my local Secondary School.

Time to clear up a few misconceptions and make some salient points:

1. Sporting success (and failure) has FUCK ALL to do with money. Money helps in certain areas, can make life a bit easier (or harder) in build-up and actual performance, but the greatest determinant of sporting performance is what goes on between the ears of a sportsperson.

2. Not a huge amount of the high performance funding in NZ reaches the athlete. Most of the money goes into the three regional academies, sports programmes run by individual sports that pay for in most cases a High Performance Manager and High Performance Coach, and into support services (think physios, nutritionists, medical etc etc). Whether that's a good or bad thing can be argued and debated another time, but the relevant point given what Joe Public thinks is the $30 million DOES NOT go into the athlete's pockets as "beneficiaries" of the NZ taxpayer.

3. Whoever set the target of 40+ medals need their head examined. As we know in Orienteering which has this problem more than most sports, "home advantage" has a role to play. The last time the CG were held in Australia (1982 Brisbane), we didn't have a very good time - 5 gold medals and 26 in total. Yet 8 years later when the CG were in Auckland, we won 17 gold medals and 58 in total. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out that taking the Aussies on in their backyard in something like this is a very difficult assignment. No, I'm not accepting mediocrity, just adding a dose of realism. In my view, the target was unrealistic given the venue of the games and was a figure plucked out of thin air, without critically assessing the realistic chances of the sports involved. So good on you SPARC - set a fucking stupid target and invite the public to come screaming at you about the waste of money you disburse from governement funds when this target is not reached. Great strategy.

I could go on but I've got work to do. To sum up what could become a very long post:

A. Some of the criticism about the performances of some of our athletes is warranted and deserved.

B. There should be continuing debate about the amount and/or use of public money in high performance sport, but the debate should be about HOW and WHERE this money is spent, and IS IT USED EFFECTIVELY?

And most importantly C. - A and B are NOT LINKED. The performances of the athletes are the "end result" of the funding, just as my stepson's School C result will be the "end result" of government funding of my local Secondary School. But you can't link the collective performance of our athletes at the Commonweakth Games with the funding of high performance sport in this country. We could have the best systems and processes, coaches and support services in the world and come home with 30 medals. Alternatively, we could have really crap systems, coaches etc and come home with 60 medals. You see, the "end result" does not necessarily reflect the effective spending of public money in this area. The day the media and public twig to this will be the day I can say we have dispensed with the nappies and reached sporting maturity.