Funding lifeline for elite athletes

Olympic gold medallist Hamish Carter. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

High-performance sport has received an unprecedented cash injection, re-energising a sector described by the country's Olympic tsar as in danger of becoming a "sad case".

On top of the existing Government spend of $42 million for high-performance sport, a further $10 million will be banked into Sparc's coffers this year, which will be increased to $15 million next year and $20 million annually after that.

More money, including a $15 million boost from Lottery Grants Board reserves, will be put towards the upgrade of facilities, most notably North Shore's Millennium Institute, to become the National Training Centre for High Performance Sport.

Minister for Sport Murray McCully also said a Government grant ($1 million), Sparc ($300,000) and Mighty River Power ($500,000) had bailed Rowing New Zealand out of a potentially crippling $1.8 million debt on its new facility at Lake Karapiro.

A Sparc board offshoot has been established to oversee high-performance sport.

It involves Sparc chairman Paul Collins, three existing Sparc directors and two independents, stock exchange chief executive Mark Weldon and Olympic gold medallist Hamish Carter.

The benefits of the cash and bricks-and-mortar boost will be most keenly felt in Olympic sports, which will embolden critics who believe the funding system is slanted towards "elitist" sports. But New Zealand Olympic Committee secretary-general Barry Maister said the announcement moved New Zealand more in line with countries like Australia.

"We have been behind," he said.

"Sports infrastructure in New Zealand was really in danger of becoming a sad case. We've had ... no substantive Government investment in sports infrastructure for as long as I can recall. We were in danger of slipping off track."

Maister said the fear that the national sports organisations would be emasculated proved wide of the mark, a point reiterated by McCully.

"What I've made clear to Sparc, the NSOs and academies is that I want more of a one-stop shop arrangement servicing the athletes," McCully said.

"I don't want [athletes] to have to run around between the new high-performance entity, the academy and the NSO. I want them to get their act together behind the scenes."

Kayaker Ben Fouhy has almost become a test case for the approach. McCully has taken a personal interest in his progress since the Olympic silver medallist walked away from the sport. "It's a good example of the system having to be more creative than it was used to."