David Leggat: Medal count cause for some refiguring

Every day as the Commonwealth Games athletes leave their village to head for competition, they pass a wall lined with national flags.

Dubbed the Wall of Fame, it has a spot for every competition, and all 245 gold medal winners have their flag and their team name inscribed in the colour of their medal.

The first name on the wall is an Indian weightlifter; the last is expected to be New Zealand's netballers.

And should the Silver Ferns fulfil expectations in tomorrow's marquee event on the final day of the Games, it will put a dash of gold on what has been a depressing Games in many respects for New Zealand.

They have earned a reputation as the tin team - tin representing fourth place, the worst of all placings.

As of last night, New Zealand had collected 24 fourth placings, to go with four gold, nine silver and 13 bronze.

Before competition began, numbers were crunched on how well New Zealand was expected to do. There is an easy formula for this: Look at the total medals won and compare them with recent Games.

At Manchester, New Zealand won 45 medals, including 11 gold; at Kuala Lumpur in 1998 the number was 34, with eight gold; and in Victoria, Canada, in 1994 New Zealanders won 41, with five gold.

Projections ahead of the Melbourne Games were for New Zealand to reach a minimum of 40 medals, the number Government funding agency Sparc set as its benchmark.

Sparc chief executive Nick Hill said a haul of about 46 would be outstanding and anything below 40 would raise red flags.

There's no chance of reaching 40, so there will be some sports feeling twitchy about their immediate funding prospects looking ahead to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and beyond.

So who deserves pats on the back and who has fluffed their Games lines?

The stellar performers, with two days to go, have been swimming, triathlon and rugby sevens.

Butterfly swimmer Moss Burmester got New Zealand's pool campaign off to a superb start with his Games record-setting 200m victory on opening night.

There were bronzes to Burmester again in the 100m butterfly, Cameron Gibson in the 200m backstroke, Hannah McLean in the women's equivalent final, the women's 4x200m freestyle relay and an emotional silver to Dean Kent in the 200m individual medley.

Apart from being the country's most successful medal winners, a deeper dig further embellishes their efforts.

At Manchester, swimmers won two medals compared with six here; there were 12 finalists in Manchester, 25 here; seven national records were established in Manchester, 10 in Melbourne, plus two Games records, by Burmester and McLean, in her backstroke leg of the relay.

In 18 of those 25 finals swims, the New Zealander touched inside the top five. They can look Sparc in the eye and rightly insist they've more than done their part of the financial bargain.
The rugby sevens won the gold, for the third straight time. Enough said.

So too the triathletes, who bagged silvers through Bevan Docherty and Sam Warriner and a bronze to Andrea Hewitt. The women finished 2-3-4, with Debbie Tanner pipped by Hewitt at the line.

Throw in fifth and sixth placings by Kris Gemmell and Hamish Carter and they will leave with heads high.

Unfortunately for New Zealand, it's not on the programme for New Delhi in 2010.

Others, such as squash - where Shelley Kitchen beat the world No 1 to win bronze and is on track to medal again in both the mixed and women's doubles - and bronze medal-winning synchronised swimming sisters Lisa and Nina Daniels, have done well. Badminton was on track for a minimum of silver in the mixed doubles.

There have been pleasant surprises, such as James Dolphin in the 200m final, who improved his time in every run, culminating in 20.72s. His future is clearly bright.

Of his teammates, Valerie Vili fulfilled expectations with her shot put gold; Beatrice Faumuina, similarly the short price favourite for a third straight discus, did not, ending fourth.

Graeme Ede won the trap shooting gold in a gripping sudden death eliminator and riflewoman Juliet Etherington won a silver and bronze, but overall the shooters were highly disappointing.

They had been fancied to top Sparc's individual medal count with 12 going into today's last activity on the ranges. They have four.

Cycling New Zealand high performance boss Michael Flynn had talked of winning eight medals before the Games. Including Rosara Joseph's silver in the mountain bike race, they have four - with the two road races to come tomorrow - which, even allowing for Sarah Ulmer's back injury, is only average.

Bowls were well below expectations, with a solitary bronze in the women's pair. So too the boxers and several athletes.

The two basketball teams were always going to get to their respective finals against Australia. This is basketball's first appearance at the Games and should be its last.

It too is missing from the New Delhi programme.

It does not belong until it is more competitive. When you know who will contest the final before even boarding the plane, something's wrong.

Sparc's investigations into why some sports did not measure up will not be a simple case of "you flopped, the cheque's stopped".

They will undergo a study of the structures within those sports and assess whether money and resources are being put to the best use.

The time for hard questions all around is fast approaching, and some sports are likely to end in tears.