Kiwis lack mental toughness, says Mallard

Their body language says it all - New Zealand women hockey players after they lost the bronze medal match. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Sports Minister Trevor Mallard says some Kiwi athletes have shown they lack the "mental toughness" needed to clinch a sporting victory and believes they need to adopt the Australians' "cut-throat" attitude.

Speaking about the Games for the first time yesterday, he said he was not accusing Kiwis of being "Lay Down Sallys" - the name given to vilified Australian rower Sally Robbins who dropped her oars during an Athens Olympics gold medal race last year.

"But we've got some athletes who I expected to perform a lot better than they did."

His view was shared by Sport and Recreation NZ (Sparc) chief executive Nick Hill, who said New Zealanders had lost their risk-taking "give-it-a-go" attitude and need the "ruthlessness" of the Australians.

Sparc had predicted 46 medals but New Zealand only won 31 - its poorest haul since Brisbane in 1982.

New Zealand won 45 medals in Manchester, 34 in Kuala Lumpur, 41 in Victoria, 58 in Auckland, 38 in Edinburgh and 26 in Brisbane.

Prime Minister Helen Clark adopted a more sympathetic tone: "I think we're often very hard on ourselves after Games like these."

A per head of population comparison put New Zealand third in the medal stakes.

"Let's not cane ourselves too hard".

Mr Mallard praised the performances of a number of athletes, including his local Hutt Valley star Nick Willis, the Silver Ferns and Valerie Vili who "I think is going to be the best athlete New Zealand has ever seen".

But "frankly we had far too many fourths ... and I think that's not satisfactory."

In the past New Zealand teams had "problems" playing the Australians in rugby, netball and league.

" We've got through that in some sports, but I think some of our mental hardness at the end of tournaments is something that we need to work on."

Willis and Vili "have shown the mental toughness ... we need to do some work analysis around what makes a difference in this situation."

Sparc would review the performance and had probably been "over-optimistic" in predicting 46 medals.

Aside from lotteries funding, the Government had increased the money going into elite athletes from about $2 million to $27 million from 2000.

"I think that what has happened is that although our funding has increased substantially over the last five years, we haven't had the investment in the last 10 or the last 30 years that other countries ... have had and we are seeing the results of that."

A "big debate" was also needed about the size of teams, although there were benefits in sending big teams, he said.

Mr Hill said it was hard to disagree on the issue of mental toughness.

"New Zealanders have a very strong tradition of fairness and letting everyone have a good go and sometimes I think that prevails over that outright desire to be the best in the world. I think Australians are ahead of us in that."

As a former businessman "my experience is that they are extraordinarily direct and ruthless compared to New Zealand.

"New Zealanders tend to be too nice."

Asked if Sparc had been naive over the medal prediction he said: "We were probably more scientific than Trevor. Last year was a very good year for sport in New Zealand and the projections we developed were really based on where those sports sat in the Commonwealth pecking order.

"The fact that we had a good year last year has really worked against us. But having said that perhaps his gut judgement is more valuable than our scientific one.

"But I stand by the estimate that we came up, even with a more conservative one, I think the issues would still be the same."

Mr Hill said Sparc expected to complete the full games debrief in May and would discuss the findings in June.

* Mr Mallard will have the chance to pass on his thoughts directly today - he delivers a speech welcoming home many of the athletes when they arrive at Auckland Airport.