John Walker: Why we’re losing

As the Olympics wind up, the questions about New Zealand's lacklustre performance grow louder. Athletics legend John Walker brought the debate into focus. This is an edited transcript of Glen Larmer of Radio Sport talking to John Walker on Thursday.

Q: Your reaction to the performances. What is it?

Walker - Well, it's very disappointing. I think there are a lot of factors involved and I would like to go through them with you, but I mean overall the standard - when the athletes are not reaching their standard that they qualified and coming way below their marks - then you can say it is unsatisfactory.

Q: Yes, that's the thing, isn't it, John? I think people in New Zealand don't expect them to win medals, but they do expect them to perform at their best, don't they?

Walker - Well, I think it comes down a lot to preparation and I believe that if you are going to perform at the very highest level you have to go to Europe and nut it out with the top ones, prior to the Olympics ... Also a lot of our athletes are just barely making the B-grade qualifying standards on a very last-minute situation, and it's really not good enough because they are so far off the boil with the reality of what [happening in] the real world. A classic example is the 10,000m - Michael Aish qualified in 28.06 [minutes] and Gebrselassie runs 26 minutes, so he's two minutes behind and he just gets in at the last minute. Ian Winchester was another one who just qualified at the last minute. You've really got to be doing the marks satisfactorily to go to the Olympic Games because you've got to be beating them by a long way. In other words, if the standard is 3.37 for 1500m you've got to run 3.32 and do it consistently ...

Q: So, in hindsight, was our athletics team too big?

Walker - It wasn't too big. It was the smallest team since 1952.

Q: But I mean some of these athletes - should they have been at Sydney 2000, should they have been selected?

Walker - Probably not. I mean, the answer is if they qualify they should, and I am contradicting myself here ... but in reality if you are looking for preparation and medals and money that's been put into them, the answer is no.

Q: Have the performances left you a bit embarrassed? ... Given your pedigree and your history, John, are you embarrassed from what you have seen of the New Zealanders at the track and field.

Walker - Well, I am not embarrassed because I am sure the athletes have not gone over there to deliberately do their worst. But I think it comes back to attitude, and a lot of the attitude I've heard from a lot of the sportspeople who have gone across - "Well it's been fun and overall we are taking part and it doesn't matter; we've at least got here" - You don't go there to take part, you don't go there to have fun, you don't go there for the experience ... People like Barbara Kendall, Aaron McIntosh and all those are all tough people and Rob Waddell - I mean you see the toughness in their competition, you see their focusedness and why they strive and why they've won and why they continually win ...

Q: So how are we going to change this, John? I bet you've got some ideas. How can we get back on the road to the next Olympics and ensure that our athletes are going to perform at their best?

Walker - Well, if you are going to look at it across the board, throwing money at the sport doesn't really produce a champion. What the sport has to need is so that they don't grovel. I mean what Aaron McIntosh and Barbara Kendall have been through the years where they've had to go to Europe and sleep on floors and sort of bum their way around Europe, that's not on. What Cathy Freeman did ... what they have allowed her to do, was to have competition. They didn't give her a lot of money, they gave her enough to live on ... They made sure she got a job, half a day's work, so she could still train ... and they gave her an air ticket around Australia so she could go to competitions and they gave her one air ticket to Europe. And they've done that with all their athletes once they reach a certain standard and I think that's all they need. You don't need to pay athletes to perform, you don't need to pay athletes to compete and you don't need to pay athletes to goof off and not work. It's got to come within the soul. You've still got to do the training ...

Q: I wonder John if the money has been misdirected. I know that's easy to say and I just wonder if enough money has been thrown at coaching.

Walker - Well, the coaches are the most important people in the world because without the coach you don't have the athlete and it goes hand in hand. And you've got to have good coaches understanding the system. If you look at what the Australians have done, they have gone and employed the best coaches where they've been deficient in the sport, like water polo, hockey and stuff like that. They've got Bulgarians and Russians. They've employed all sorts of coaches and in technical events it is very important to have an understanding of what the sport is about ...

Q: The problem is though I think a lot of New Zealanders still are arrogant enough to believe that the skills are within New Zealand.

Walker - Well, they're not.

Q: Okay, John, so for NZ from here. Maybe not just talking about track and field. Where do we go from here? We've got this ministerial inquiry going on. I don't know what they're going to come up with.

Walker - The thing is with the ministerial inquiry - and I hope it's going to be right and the people that are on it are very good - but there are no Olympic sports on it ... The problem, too, is which way does New Zealand want to go, and I've said this before. Whether we want an elite sport system, whether we want to win medals and put our money into coaching and put money into some programmes that will win medals in the four years or eight years from now, or do we just keep on going the way we do and just put it all into social welfare and funding other things. Fifty per cent of the people will say we have to help the poor ... and I agree with that. But at the end of the day New Zealand gets pretty glum when we don't win any medals. We are a sporting nation.