Chris Rattue: Unlikely haka hero hitting top form

Talk about New Zealanders inspiring New Zealanders.

It's very hard not to, of course, considering the number of Air New Zealand promotions on the subject that pop up during the television coverage of the Commonwealth Games.

At the moment, the ratio is 106 inspiring advertisements for every one Kiwi medal, although Games officials are confident that by the closing ceremony, this will have dipped below the 100 mark. We shall see.

While the national carrier has used athletes like Hamish Carter in its joint scheme with the New Zealand Olympic Committee, an unlikely hero has emerged who may inspire a generation of couch potatoes to leap to their feet.

Chef de mission Dave Currie has become a Games star with his penchant for doing haka and his unswerving belief in their place in international sport. He has also confirmed the notion that success is 99 per cent perspiration, while the rest is down to talent.

His warrior ways haven't gone down well with everyone. For instance, I know of one Games watcher who finds herself yelling "Sit Dave sit" every time the camera switches to our leader.

There is even the feeling that Dave might be deflecting attention from our dusty effort as we battle to keep our nose in front of Papua New Guinea in the gold medal count.

Idle minds make the devil's work, I say, and there have been too many flat periods between the medals. Shame on the Dave doubters.

Yet such has been Currie's impact on others that they are left feeling disappointed, even robbed, at events where winners and losers file past with no sight of Dave and his crew belting out another ground-breaking routine in the background.

Kapa haka groups are preparing for an avalanche of inquiries from middle management types eager to latch on to this demonstration sport, and Currie looks set to be inundated with mentoring requests.

Yet behind this inspiring and perspiring story lies another.

The question that must be asked is what would have happened to chef Currie if his team had actually hauled in medals at the rate that was predicted?

There must have been real concerns that Currie would have burned himself out, especially if he had suffered any early injuries and been forced to keep slapping away.

Currie appears to have realised this and played within himself during the early haka, perhaps fearful that if he had suffered an injury, Eric Hollingsworth would have suggested he go home.

Instead of a gold medal spree followed by wall-to-wall Currie haka, quite the reverse has happened.

As medal-less minutes have turned into hours, and hours into days, Currie was left frustrated before resorting to greeting silver and bronze medal winners with his ceremonial dance.

As a close friend of Currie's confided: "Dave trained relentlessly and went to these Games absolutely convinced that he had 20 world class haka in him, plus maybe two others in which he could beat his previous personal bests.

"But he's been left like a cat on a hot tin roof ... there are all these pent up haka desperate to get out and I think the Australians and everyone else should take that into account when they criticise him."

Rumours, concerns and accusations have swirled around Currie ever since he arrived in Melbourne, including:

* Cleaners - the most reliable source of information at major sporting events - found deep heel indents scattered throughout the floor of Dave's hotel room, and more were discovered hidden in a closet.

* Dave peeled off a haka at a Melbourne restaurant instead of leaving a tip.

* He encouraged young swimmers in his care to perform a haka for a silver medallist.

* That as the medals continued to pass New Zealand by, Dave considered letting a haka rip after the New Zealand hockey team thrashed Scotland in a preliminary match.

* That Dave failed Fiona Crombie by not zipping out to the airport and giving her a solo performance after she had to quit the Games early.

* Younger competitors might have been frightened if Dave had cut loose at the gymnastics, particularly as the acoustics tend to reverberate in gym halls.

* If the basketballers win a medal that, save for the odd elbow, Dave's haka will be hidden from view because of his determination to remain in the back row.

These are all matters that can be dealt with in the debrief and through counselling.

The good news, for now, is that Currie has built brilliantly. After early elbow wobbles and poor foot movement, he hit top form at the pool, although the purists will point out that he still refused to go bare-chested.

The tremors will be felt in the sports halls of power, with the pressure on rugby head Chris Moller to match Currie's efforts at next year's World Cup in France.

In terms of succession planning, Future Games leaders will need at least nine years' experience in a Maori cultural group.

This, surely, is a moot point. So long as Currie realises that his opportunities at the historic 2008 Olympics in Beijing will be extremely limited, having gained experience at Athens and Melbourne he deserves another chance on the biggest stage.


Sidelines

Touching the void ... Dean Kent's silver medal swim on Monday night was one of those rare Games occasions where emotions did bite deep.

But this column simply can't agree with contentions by our swimming commentators - including the great Anthony Mosse - that the pool was a metre too long, and that Kent would have held off fast finishing Scot Gregor Tait otherwise.

This was reminiscent of at least one early boxing commentary, where it was suggested that the judges weren't counting all the punches by a New Zealander. Someone really has it in for us.

Back to the pool.

For a start, we should have every confidence that the pool was, per regulations, 50m in length. Australia might have trouble getting the correct buildings etched on Games medals, as evidenced by the 2000 Olympics, but they have always been pretty handy with a tape measure.

Furthermore, if Australia had decided to go with a 49m pool, this would have been signalled and swimmers could have trained accordingly, even adjusted their body suits and listened to different tunes on their iPods, and the results would have been the same.

I've also got a hunch that Tait - if anyone had bothered to ask him - would have revealed he felt the pool was precisely the right measurement.


Back-pedalling ... Who said this?

"Sarah is good to go. Her form from the last 2-3 weeks has indicated she has the fitness."

New Zealand cycling endurance coach Jacques Landry, not long before Sarah Ulmer pulled out of the road time trial because of a longstanding back problem.