Cycling NZ sprint team partners Natasha Hansen (left) and Olivia Podmore were both given payments which have been questioned by a former Cycling NZ board member. Photo / Photosport
A former Cycling New Zealand board member believes the sporting organisation's dire financial situation is partly due to several confidential payouts and legal fees totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Olympians and a disgraced coach.
The Herald on Sunday is aware of at least three financial settlements Cycling NZ made with Olympians Natasha Hansen, Dylan Kennett and former Cycling NZ coach Anthony Peden.
Long-standing cycling administrator Kevin Searle was on the Cycling NZ board in 2019 and told the Herald on Sunday these "substantial" payouts contributed to a funding shortfall which he believes contributed to the closure of four national junior development hubs from March 2022 where future Olympians are discovered.
However, Cycling NZ interim chief executive Monica Robbers has disputed this to the Herald on Sunday, saying the high-performance budget which deals with athlete and staff employment agreements is "ring-fenced" from junior development budgets.
Hansen and Kennett, both riders at the Rio Olympics in 2016, left after disputes with Cycling NZ over what they believed was unfair team selection treatment and conflicts with coaches behind the scenes.
Financial settlements were paid to both and they signed non-disclosure agreements.
Rio Olympian Olivia Podmore, who died in a suspected suicide on August 9 last year, was also paid a $20,000-plus sporting grant for welfare reasons from Cycling NZ in 2018 - a year in which she did not compete in the World Championships.
Former Cycling NZ sprint coach Anthony Peden also left the organisation in May 2018 following controversy over a relationship with another athlete.
An independent inquiry by QC Mike Heron was commissioned into the culture in 2018 following Peden's departure and the resulting media storm. Heron concluded he was "satisfied an inappropriate personal relationship existed between the coach and a female athlete".
However, Peden is also understood to have left with a payout from Cycling NZ - to then go on to coach in China.
Kevin Searle was on the board of Cycling NZ from May to October in 2019 and left after several disputes with what he claims was the mismanagement of the organisation.
"I wasn't on for very long at all because I had no idea how difficult the scenario was," Searle told the Herald on Sunday.
"Even when I was on the board there was a negotiated payout with Dylan Kennett with the issues at Rio and that was withheld from the board. Again the chair felt they'd made it a confidentiality agreement, and only the board chair and the CEO knew the figure. I protested and said how can we be effectively directors of an organisation and not know key elements of our business."
Searle believes it was "the same with Anthony Peden", who he claims "should not have been paid a cent" but received a confidential payout.
"The money they spent on lawyers achieving that is… If you go into the Cycling NZ figures you cannot find it. It's hidden in corporate speak. I'm not bad with spreadsheets and figures. I couldn't find it. It was masked," Searle claimed.
It is understood Kennett was paid $15,000 following the dispute in 2018. It is alleged that several lawyers were involved in negotiating this settlement.
Kennett signed an NDA to receive the money, which stipulated he could not speak about any of the selection disputes he dealt with during the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Rio and London Olympian Natasha Hansen was also given a financial settlement in 2020 following a selection dispute for the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Herald on Sunday understands the legal fees for this dispute were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Cycling NZ interim chief executive and chief operating officer Monica Robbers would not comment on the details of any athlete or staff settlements when questioned by the Herald on Sunday.
"Non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements are commonplace across workplaces. We won't comment on individual employment contracts," Robbers said.
"It is important to note that the high-performance budget is ring-fenced and stand-alone and has no impact on Cycling New Zealand's other operations and activities.
"The change of direction for the regional hubs was made on the back of a cost-benefit analysis, not the availability of funds."
However, when it was announced on December 16 last year that the junior performance hubs would be shut down, outgoing chief executive Jacques Landry said Cycling NZ had been picking up the "financial slack" for the hubs.
Landry said the organisation had faced "many hurdles - one of the biggest being funding challenges" following the Tokyo Olympic Games.
"Some of this is a result of the way sport in New Zealand is funded - especially at the end of an Olympic cycle; some is due to Covid," Landry said.
The hubs in Auckland, Waikato, Christchurch and Invercargill will close from March this year.
The announcement came just weeks after Cycling NZ's principal sponsor APL Windows pulled its support from the organisation. In Cycling NZ's 2020 annual report it states the organisation made $1.14 million in sponsorship that year.
Former Cycling NZ board member Kevin Searle is a retired lawyer and is still the coordinator of school cycling in Canterbury and a coach there.
He was also the chairman of the junior department of Cycling NZ for many years - being the chairman of Cycling NZ Schools from 2009 to 2019.
Searle said he doesn't know the exact amount spent in total on legal fees and settlements with Peden, Kennett and Hansen.
"No I don't know [the dollar amount] but what I do know is in almost every case they were substantial," Searle claimed.
"I was a lawyer and lawyers don't come cheaply.
"The worst thing an organisation can do is involve lawyers because the only person who's going to gain at that point are the lawyers. And when you've got a specialist charging $400 to $500 an hour you're in trouble.
"We're talking hundreds of thousands [in Cycling NZ legal fees] not $20,000. There's your entire youth development programme for about five years. I mean that's the thing, it's the wasting of the money," Searle claims.
The Herald on Sunday has also uncovered via official information that within the Government-funded High Performance Sport NZ - which then fund Cycling NZ - there have been four personal grievance cases settled with staff members since July 2015.
A fresh investigation into the culture at Cycling NZ continues by QC Mike Heron and Massey Professor Sarah Leberman following the death of Rio Olympian Olivia Podmore on August 9.
While the findings of Heron's inquiry are yet to be handed down, Cycling NZ chief executive Jacques Landry, high performance director Martin Barras and head sprint coach Rene Wolff have all resigned since the investigation was commissioned on August 19.
Searle said joining the board of Cycling NZ in 2019 "was probably one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made".
Searle said he "had a number of serious face-offs" with then-chairman Tony Mitchell over the Cycling NZ budget leading up to the Tokyo Olympics.
Searle claimed: "It became abundantly clear that unless something drastic was done they were going to be insolvent a year after Tokyo."
Searle said Sport NZ funded Cycling NZ for an extra year after the delay to the Tokyo Games to July 2021.
The former Cycling NZ board member said, in his opinion, the development of cycling in New Zealand was being compromised by the management of the high-performance department.
"What really irritates me is all the work done by us as volunteers and the community team at Cycling NZ to develop our sport is put in peril by the behaviour of the high performance [training department]," Searle claimed. "This is reflected by the payouts and the need to use lawyers."
"Sadly all this wasting of money has meant that when things get tough the innocent parties get punished. Imagine how all these young riders who have had the rug pulled out from under them feel. The loss of these development centres [in March] is a direct result of high performance misspending," Searle claimed.
