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Prime Minister Helen Clark says more taxpayer funding is likely for New Zealand's athletes in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics.
Government agencies put an estimated $80 million into Olympic sports in the four years since the Athens games and Helen Clark today said New Zealand's haul of nine medals - our best since Seoul 20 years ago - showed it was money well spent.
Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc) would now review the team's performance and how its funding had contributed to that, but a boost in funding was likely in the lead up to London.
"I'm sure we'll have to spend more. The first thing is for Sparc to do a review for Government on how the actual targeting of the high performance and most likely medal winning sports actually went and then have a look at what's a realistic budget," Helen Clark said on TVNZ's Breakfast programme.
"I don't have a feeling for how much more but what I know is that to do well at the Olympics, you can't just be the gifted amateur.
"You do need that total focus, you do need all the support that we can wrap around our athletes."
New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) president Barry Maister yesterday called for more to be poured into high performance sport.
Maister, also an Olympic selector, told reporters the NZOC was happy with the three gold, one silver, five bronze haul from Beijing.
The medals came off the back of Sparc investing $60 million into its high performance programme since 2004 and another $10 million a year into other programmes of which probably over half were Olympics related.
"We're happy," Maister said, when asked how he felt about the return.
"We can never be totally happy, the world is moving on in terms of performance and if we stay still we will get further behind, so what that means is that in our review - which will take place when we get back - we have to look for another edge."
If New Zealand got complacent, the result in London 2012 would not be as good, he said.
Sports that had sustained international programmes would succeed, the others - mainly smaller sports - would not, he said.
Maister expressed general disappointment in team sports - soccer, hockey and basketball.
- NZPA
