Athletics: Now it's down to the nitty gritty

Many leading sports administrators should be circling June on their office calendars.

It's around the end of that month the Government's sporting arm, Sparc, will complete its review into New Zealand performances at Melbourne's Commonwealth Games.

And out of that review will come good news for some sports and less reason to be cheerful for others.

The facts are well-cooked numbers: 31 medals, six gold, 12 silver and 13 bronze.

There were 27 fourth placings, which earned the team the sobriquet of the "Tin Team" and served to frustrate both the sports and Sparc.

Sports Minister Trevor Mallard this week had a crack at New Zealand athletes lacking "mental toughness" for the top level. It's wrong in simple broad brush terms, but certainly individual makeup is a relevant factor to an athlete's ability to perform on a given time and day.

The next couple of months is more than just officials sitting around a table in Wellington punching numbers into calculators.

Sports will get ample opportunity to present their cases. Cycling, for example, might argue that had Sarah Ulmer's dodgy back not prevented her riding the individual time trial their medal tally would most likely have been better than four.

Others won't have a leg to stand on.

The first stage will be the New Zealand Olympic Committee and Sparc sitting down with all 16 sports for a debrief.

"We'll look at what the key themes are we can take out of this," said Sparc chief executive Nick Hill.

"One idea we're looking at is whether we can develop some collegial critiquing, where we get different sports to hear from each other what their views are and try to get some diversity into the process."

Another is to involve third parties with strong high performance backgrounds to offer some fresh ingredients to the pot.

The NZOC will reach their conclusions. Sparc's nine-strong board will receive a report and consider the recommendations put before them. Hill anticipates the whole operation being wrapped up by the end of June before funding allocations are released a few weeks later.

There's a distinction to be made among the sports. Some compete at both Commonwealth and Olympic Games, such as swimming, athletics, cycling, shooting, gymnastics, hockey, table tennis and badminton.

They have funding programmes in place through to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

In those cases, it will be a question of whether they should get more help, or take a trim as a result of their Melbourne results. That is, are they on track or have they slipped down a side road.

For the Commonwealth Games-only sports, such as bowls, squash and netball, judgments will be made relative to when their next big event is.

One key funding issue from the Games concerns the disbursement of money within each sport.

Take shooting.

Its squad of 24 performed well below expectations. Four medals was a third of the total haul Sparc and the sport itself had hoped for. Yet one of those six gold medals came from trap shooter Graeme Ede.

So, while shooting might have to prepare for a bag of money disappearing from its account, what about Ede?

Is there any inclination to make sure he, as one of the best performers of any team in Melbourne, does not suffer, assuming he's eyeing a trip to Beijing?

Sparc prefers to go the bulk funding way, rather than single out individuals, or specific teams within a sport.

"What we've resisted doing is proscribing exactly how they spend the money," Hill said.

"Sometimes programmes are bolted on, say, having coaching directors in sports. We've insisted money for a coaching director goes to finding the right person.

"In the case of the high performance bit, as soon as we start telling them exactly to whom and how they spend the money they can turn around and say 'well, you told us to do that' and the ability to hold them to account becomes much harder."

Hill said the likelihood is shooting will be subject to close scrutiny not just on their high performance programmes, but at management.

"That's what happened to swimming a couple of years ago. We stopped funding them because we didn't think they were set up in a robust-enough way. I think certainly we've got some questions around shooting in that regard."

Plenty of questions are coming up for the other sports too.

Post-Mortem

What happens next: The New Zealand Olympic Committee and Sparc meet each sport separately to review the results from Melbourne.

Who else might be in the mix: Third parties with extensive knowledge of high performance sport to offer independent assessments.

When will the final report be ready: The Sparc board, chaired by John Wells, should have a report and recommendations on its table by about the end of June.

And then: Funding disbursement will be staggered to fit with each sport's calendar.