Games athletes arrive home to Mallard's comments

Swimming gold medallist Moss Burmester arrives back in Auckland. Picture / Dean Purcell

It would be entertaining to see Sports Minister Trevor Mallard stand face to armpit with Valerie Vili and suggest New Zealand athletes lacked mental toughness.

Wearing the gold medal she won in the shot put at the Commonwealth Games, Vili looks down from her 1.96m height at the person making the suggestion as if he was some strange bug in a specimen bottle.

"I'm tough. I've got no complaints."

Fortunately, Mr Mallard had foreseen the consequences of Vili hearing the comments he made on Monday that athletes needed to be tougher.

He had put her forward as an example of how the other athletes should be.

Vili would take that. At the athlete's homecoming at Auckland International Airport yesterday, she said her event was a challenge, "and you don't know beforehand who is going to get gold. But the best takes it out".

The gold medal around her neck made it unnecessary to point out who was the best.

About 300 people were there to watch the homecoming for the Games team, mostly family members and friends.

Initial plans for an outside welcome including kapa haka and water cannons were shelved in case the weather turned foul. The plane was delayed by half an hour, and when the athletes arrived many practised their 100m sprints through the arrival lounge to either escape the cameras or get to connecting flights.

There were few black tracksuits in the crowd to hear speeches by chef de mission of the team Dave Currie and by Trevor Mallard, who had decided it was not the best place to repeat his assertions of the day before.

Most of the athletes had not heard the comments.

But their families had.

Andy Kent, brother of silver medal winning Dean Kent, suggested Mallard might like to test his own mental fortitude by having Jan Cameron as a coach for a few days.

"I know all the swimmers pretty well and they have worked very hard. With a coach like Jan Cameron, you have to be mentally tough in the first place."

The bling around Moss Burmester's neck included a bronze for the 100m butterfly, and a gold for the 200m butterfly in a Games record-breaking time.

"I was very happy. I'd come fourth in Manchester so I was aiming for the top this time."

He admitted many had come fourth, but pointed out it was by splits of a second in the swimming.

"We're plenty strong enough. We can take on the best in the world. Nobody purposely goes out to get fourth."

Nick Willis, winner of the 1500m, said he was "blown away" to win.