More SPARC Spin

The release of the SPARC report reviewing the New Zealand performance at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games is just another example that the bureaucrats just “don’t get it”.

New Zealand is an extremely proud sporting nation and one that I would argue punches above its weight on the global stage. At times our expectations are not met and invariably provoke an outpouring of grief and much soul-searching as to why. According to SPARC, underperformance at the 2006 CG in certain sports was due to:

* Lack of depth, exposed through injury, illness and unavailability of key and/or experienced athletes;
* Commonwealth Games being a milestone event for some sports;
* Some coaches lacking capability and capacity;
* Some athletes not committed at the level required to be world-class, and;
* Some sports lacking the required high-performance culture.

What a sorry list of excuses. There is only ever one reason for underperformance in sport: the opposition (whether it be a team or individual) were “better on the day”. Anything else is just an … excuse.

Let’s explore these excuses in detail:

1. Lack of Depth.

Well, hello, New Zealand is a small country of 4 million people with economic resources to match. Now SPARC will tell you that size doesn’t matter and if we are smarter and innovative we can overcome the bigger budgets and populations of sporting superpowers such as Australia.

Time for a reality check. From sex to sport, size does matter and New Zealand sportspeople are already fairly smart and innovative. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t overachieve on the world sporting stage as we have done. SPARC seem to think that because the Government has chucked an extra $30 million into sport and recreation it has a divine right to expect better sporting results.

Time for another reality check. Money does not buy sporting success. It can help in certain areas, but there is no direct correlation. Increase the budget by 50% and we’ll get 50% more medals. If only sporting life was so simple.

So what is SPARC going to do about this “lack of depth”? From the report:

“To develop depth, SPARC needs to further focus its investment and support to sports that can win medals.”

Translation: We will continue to decrease the number of eggs in the funding basket.

That is so short-sighted and about as dumb as you can get, and where SPARC have got it completely wrong. Sport is an unpredictable game, sometimes with winners coming out of the woodwork before anyone has had a chance to recognise them, that further selective targeting of high performance funding just increases the chance that a future champion will be missed by the system, and a potential winner foregone. I argue that further selective targeting of high performance funding will decrease, rather than increase, our international sporting success.

Sporting success in New Zealand is to some extent cylical and inconsistent. That is a natural by-product of being a small nation (both in terms of population and economy) and I would have thought that anyone with half a brain would recognise that is what our sporting history has shown. Let me give you some examples:

Kayaking, Rowing, Hockey, Equestrian, Yachting, Cycling – at times on “top of the world” yet at other times struggling to compete. I’ve given six examples of sports that I thought of off the top of my head in 5 seconds where New Zealand has had intermittent success and I challenge anyone to name me six sports where New Zealand has consistent long-term (5+ years) international success (and rugby doesn’t count, as that has not been funded by the public purse to any great extent). And by success, I mean “winning”, because that is how SPARC defines our sporting success.

So let’s chuck out the shooting and lawn bowls eggs out of the funding basket and only leave the rowing and swimming ones in there because they are the ones that are doing well at the moment. As a strategy it is dumb – there is no other word to describe it.

2. Commonwealth Games a Milestone Event

This needs some explaining. For some sports, the CG is not the most important event for that particular sport – I think the example of Hockey was given where World Cups, Champions Trophy etc are more important events. Thus for Hockey, the CG is a “milestone” event as opposed to a “pinnacle” event (pinnacle being the most important, whatever it may be).

What a load of horse dung. If the CG is only a milestone event for e.g. the NZ Hockey team, then it is also only a milestone event for their competitors as well. If the NZ Hockey team had beaten Australia for the gold medal, would we see Australia describing the CG as only a milestone event and using that as an excuse for their loss? I don’t think so. Seeing that in the report is laughable.

3. Coaches lacking capability and capacity

Oh yeah, that’s right, underperfomance in sport is always (partly) the coaches fault. It may be true in certain circumstances, but as a generalisation it’s weak, tired and not accurate.

4. Athletes not committed

See 3. above – may have some relevance in individual cases but as a general excuse, I struggle to believe that the vast majority of our athletes at the CG weren’t giving their all during competition (or in training leading up to it).

5. Lack of high-performance culture

This needs translation as well. What it really means is some sports have yet to become the full-time professional business that SPARC want to see in our sports (that matter) with full-time managers, coaches and athletes living and breathing their sport 24/7, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for international success. Time for the final reality check – despite the extra funding SPARC have given some sports, it is still not enough to transform them into “professionals”. Many of the Commonwealth and Olympic sports are “amateur” by definition, and if SPARC thinks that by using money to employ full-time managers and coaches while athletes still have to earn a crust through a day job is enough to suddenly transform a sport into the world of professionalism, they (SPARC) have rocks in their head. CEO of Hockey NZ (Ramesh Patel) has made this point – while it’s great to have funding for managers, coaches and international travel, the athletes still have to spend x hours a day working to put food on the table.

You can’t chuck an extra couple of hundred thousand p.a. at a sport like shooting and expect an amateur sport to display all the qualities of a professional sport in a short-time span that can suddenly take on and beat the world (where, incidentally, they are up against full-time professional athletes in the case of for e.g. India). Yet that is what they expect. Unrealistic, unjustified and shows how far removed from reality these paper-pushers are.

So there you have it. What a pathetic list of excuses for a perceived failure. One day I’ll write about their recommendations contained in their report, which are just as pitiful.