My life in sport: Dave Currie

Dave Currie. Photo / Mark Mitchell

New Black Caps manager Dave Currie has a long history in sports administration. He was chef de mission of the New Zealand team in the past two Olympic campaigns, and led the Kiwi teams in the Melbourne and Manchester Commonwealth Games and the Sydney Paralympics.

He will again manage the New Zealand teams at the New Delhi Commonwealth Games next year and the London Olympics in 2012.

Currie himself is unsure how he finds time to manage the Black Caps, but the former Halberg Trust director has no shortage of enthusiasm.

Why the move to the Black Caps?

I got a call from Justin [Vaughan] about five to six weeks ago really out of the blue. It was not something I had really considered and initially I thought, 'Well it'd be hard, it's too difficult, my life is busy'. But I've always had a real interest in cricket and the opportunity to be involved with the Black Caps sounded fantastic and I decided I would do it. They're a very committed side, I'm really impressed with that. And to be involved with a group who want to become very good cricketers was something that I saw would be quite exciting and I hoped I could contribute something too.

What inspired you to embark on a career working with sportspeople?

People often ask me how I've arrived at where I'm at, and in a sense I've got no idea. But if I look back I can see how all the dots were joined up. I tried very hard to be a competitive marathon runner and to get to the Olympics myself, but at the end of the day I simply wasn't good enough. I've got some understanding, though, of the commitment and effort athletes have to put in to get to the top.

Along the way I was race director of the ironman for 10 years, I was asked to run as a guide for a marathon runner in the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul, came back from that and got involved in disability sports, was president of Paralympics New Zealand, was asked to take the Paralympic team to Sydney in 2000 and then I was encouraged I guess to apply for the role in Commonwealth Games in Manchester and then in Athens.

I guess I haven't got a 'no' button, so I tend to try and do what I can, do it as well as I can and then having done one thing it's tended to lead to another. So I guess cricket is an extension of that as well. It wasn't something I had initially thought about, but when the opportunity was there, the fit was pretty good.

You mention marathon running. When you were 13 years old were there any other sports you fancied yourself as a future star in?

Cricket was probably the sport that I was really keen on when I was young and of course I dreamed of playing for New Zealand. I played cricket, I played rugby, I ran for the school and I also wrestled, you know, freestyle wrestling. And what happened, I got selected for a tour of India with the New Zealand team when I was 17 and so for the next seven to eight years wrestling dominated my sporting life. It was after that when I got injured that I started running competitively. I was in my 30s before I got really serious about marathon running.

Describe your job with the Black Caps.

The role for me and the balance of the sport crew is to make sure that there is seamlessness around all the organisation and off-field preparations for Dan [Vettori] and the players, so they can focus on just playing cricket. Cricket is a brutal schedule. We've got two Twenty20s, five one-dayers, so you play, you travel, you practise and you play and you do that seven times in a row. So it's important that all of that goes well for the players to ensure that they can do what they need to do. It's all the preparation around the travel, it's the uniforms, it's the hotels, it's the stuff around the media and providing a strong, secure environment.

What's the best part about your job?

The engagement with committed cricketers who are absolutely focused on what they want to do. To have the opportunity to do that is pretty special and I enjoy that interaction and to see the excitement and their commitment and their dedication to what they do. To be close to that is a real thrill.

But the other bit is game day. Everybody trains to compete and to be at the side of the ground on game day, and to see how all that unfolds is a very special privilege.

And the worst?

Oh there's never a worst thing. Whatever it is it just has to be dealt with. To be involved with a dedicated group like the Black Caps is a privilege, so there can never be a downside.

Through all your involvement with sporting teams, what is the proudest moment of which you've been part?

That's tough. I wouldn't single out any one, but what's been the proudest I guess is seeing young New Zealand athletes making an absolute commitment to go somewhere they haven't been before and risking absolute disaster in the pursuit of having their best performance.

To have your best performance you've got to do something you haven't done before. So to see athletes have the courage to make that absolute commitment is the thing that I'm most proud of.

What sticks out in your mind as the best sporting achievement from a New Zealander you've witnessed?

I guess the more recent events have the more impact, but probably in the Bird's Nest Stadium when Valerie Vili threw the shotput in Beijing. There were 91,000 people in the stadium and Valerie, this tall elegant women, walked out with a field of nine and dominated that event and the stadium just loved her really. It was probably the most dominant performance I think I've ever seen from a New Zealander at the Olympics. It was just fantastic.

Who was your childhood hero?

I had two really - Sir Ed Hillary and Murray Halberg.

Murray because of athletics and back in those days I was doing a bit of running and thought what he did in Rome in 1960 was fantastic. And with Sir Ed, first because of Everest and then with the transantarctic expedition. He kind of thumbed his nose to authority and that very much appealed to me as I grew up in Otahuhu and I had a healthy disregard for authority I guess.

I've been extraordinarily lucky and privileged in my life.

I worked for 17 years with the Halberg Trust and worked for Murray over that time and got to know him, and that was just an extraordinary coincidence really. And then to have the opportunity to meet Sir Ed a few times and talk to him about Everest and about the transantarctic expedition particularly, which had captured my imagination as a teenager, was pretty special.

* Dave Currie - CV

1987 - Race director New Zealand Ironman Triathlon until 1997.

1988 - Appointed executive director of the Halberg Trust, a post he held until 2005.

2000 - Chef de mission Paralympics, Sydney.

2001 - Awarded Order of Merit by Paralympics New Zealand.

2002 - Chef de mission Commonwealth Games, Manchester.

2004 - Chef de mission Olympic Games, Athens.

2006 - Chef de mission Commonwealth Games, Melbourne.

2008 - Chef de mission Olympic Games, Beijing.

2009 - Made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) in New Year's honours; appointed manager of Black Caps.