Dialogue: Athletes get a say in choice of country's sporting finest

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Barbara Kendall's plea has finally been answered.

After walking out of this year's New Zealand sports awards - furious that her boardsailing mentor, Grant Beck, missed out on the top-coach award for the third year running - Kendall went home and scribbled a letter to the Halberg Trust. She suggested its judging panel needed an overhaul.

Hey presto, this week a new-look voting academy will be named and include, for the first time, five former athletes, all of them past winners or finalists of the sports awards.

The Halberg Trust, of course, says the change had been in the wind for a while. But the letter from Kendall, two-time sportswoman of the year and a finalist six times, must have hit the right nerve and got the trust's arms and legs twitching.

Controversy has abounded ever since the Sportsman of the Year Award was born more than 50 years ago, and the country's sports media began making the judging calls.

There was the year Bonecrusher was nominated and the academy had to draw the line between man and horse.

More lately there has been outrage as Paralympic gold medallists have been overlooked in favour of able-bodied stars.

Accusations of bias flew when Rob Waddell took the 1998 sportsman of the year honour from horseman Blyth Tait.

This year, radio talkback rang hot when the well-heeled Team New Zealand beat the Black Sox, who scrimped and saved their way to another softball world title.

And Kendall has been in the thick of it too, when she was denied the premier award in 1992. After becoming only the second New Zealand woman to win Olympic gold, she was edged out by Annelise Coberger, silver medallist at the Winter Olympics.

Kendall wanted the media-dominated voting panel to have athletes on board, because "sportspeople know what it's really like out there".

Of the 16 voting members, four will be former finalists or winners, and one will be a retired athlete from the national Athletes' Commission. There are nine sports journalists or broadcasters, and two "historians" - Olympic selector Bruce Cameron and author Ron Palenski.

The athlete judges won't be named until later this week - but three are men and two are women. Kendall, who is due to give birth to her first child this week, is not among them. She says she needs a few years for some turbulent water to pass under the bridge.

Being a judge on the academy panel is not easy. Before retiring this year, I spent four years on the academy, and found it gave me one of the most excruciating brain-aches I have known. After deliberating in a boardroom for six hours, I would walk out with the weight of the North and South Islands on each shoulder.

Bringing athletes into the configuration is a sensible move. Hopefully they will be able to stress whether a world title in rowing ranks higher than a No 1 spot on the world equestrian rankings. And maybe they will find out just how difficult it is comparing apples with pears.

There is, of course, the worry they may show a little bias towards their own code, or one of their proteges.

But Dave Currie, the executive director of the Halberg Trust, is confident that athletes are an honest bunch who will be objective.

"In my experience elite sportspeople have a passion for all sport," he says. "They'll tell you if it's a Mickey Mouse event or not. Anyway, their vote is one of 16."

Currie says the move to involve former sports champions was evolutionary.

"The trust needs to ensure that it remains relevant to athletes, and be as fair and accurate as it can be. I think it will be a lively debate," he says.

There is still a call for the ordinary sports fan to have his or her say. A couple of years ago, the Sports Foundation's concept for people's choice awards foundered.

Currie says the trust has been toying with the idea of giving the public one vote for the overall Halberg Award. But that's when it becomes a matter of practicality. The category winners, from which the overall champion is chosen, cannot be made public before the awards night.

There will always be debate and disappointment over who takes home the silver statuettes.

"I would be worried if there was no argument, enthusiasm or passion about it. Then you would know that people didn't care any more," says Currie.

Kendall is still not totally comfortable with the idea of the sports awards singling out solitary winners.

"How can you compare sportspeople against sportspeople? That's essentially the main thing wrong with the awards," she says. "I know they want to have one person as a winner, but I think it should be a celebration of sport. To become a world champion in anything these days is phenomenal. Why not just celebrate that?"

Kendall will probably have to write a few more letters to convince New Zealanders of that one - it's part of the culture to pick one winner above all others.