KEY POINTS:
Big money may be on offer to tempt Olympic gold medallist Valerie Vili overseas, but Athletics New Zealand (ANZ) is confident their star shot putter will remain loyal.
Vili last night became the only woman to win back-to-back Halberg supreme awards, while her mentor Kirsten Hellier was named coach of the year.
Vili afterwards made a plea for leading athletes to receive more Government funding, saying she loved her sport "but there needs to be some value for what I do", The Press said today.
The Government sport-funding agency Sparc pays international athletes via Performance Enhancement Grants (PEG), and although Vili receives a $40,000 grant, the 24-year-old Aucklander said she didn't feel valued.
Vili said she stayed in New Zealand because she was loyal.
"If I was doing this for money, I could go and compete in France, my husband's country, or England because of my father (he was British), because you can make a lot of money."
ANZ chief executive Scott Newman said the sport was well aware of the financial temptations available to Vili overseas.
"I suspect Val and Kirsten received some very good offers after the Olympics - it would be nothing for some countries to throw a quiet million at them and say `come and compete for us, because you're the next gold medallists'," Newman said today.
"We can't do that - as a national federation, we just don't have vast sums of money."
Newman said while it was feasible for Vili to earn good money competing in France or England, there was more at stake than just dollars.
"You'd be shifting into a completely different environment, it's quite a decision," he said.
"But we're very conscious of those things, and we certainly do everything possible to support Val and Kirsten.
"We know financially that will never be as much as they could potentially get from other countries, but we offer what we can."
Vili said on RadioSport today that she appreciated the assistance she received "but I believe that athletes in minor sports at top level can be valued more what they do". Vili's gold from the Beijing Olympics, coupled with Nick Willis' 1500m bronze, had provided track and field in New Zealand with a real boost, Newman said.
"There's no doubt high performance success creates interest in the sport... Olympic and Commonwealth golds really resonate with the New Zealand public.
"I guess it's about maintaining that success - Val's been great, and hopefully she'll keep going for the next eight years. But we need someone else to continue that sustained success."
While Sparc provided sufficient funding for elite competitors, financing the next tier was proving problematic for athletics, Newman said.
It was important that funding was available for developing athletes without it being cut off from elite competitors.
"It's tough at that development level - our recent high performance proposal to Sparc was heavily weighted around getting more funding to our second tier athletes while at the same time recognising the Val Vilis and the Nick Willises."
- NZPA
