Halberg factor a great touch to our spot in the village

By NICK BROWN in Manchester

The iconic inspiration of Sir Murray Halberg looms large over the New Zealand athletes preparing to compete in the Manchester Commonwealth Games.

Not only is Sir Murray in the athletes' village as a mentor for the New Zealand team, but a giant poster of the Olympic and Commonwealth gold medallist graces the team's headquarters, showing him winning the three-mile event at the Cardiff Games in 1958.

The poster carries his motivating words: "The result must not give the opportunity to later say, 'If only'."

The New Zealand chef de mission, Dave Currie, wants to ensure that all 304 athletes and officials in the team do everything possible to achieve results without regrets that some part of their preparation or performance fell short of potential.

Currie is well aware of the public and media propensity to measure Games team success in medals, but he is not in the business of setting medal targets for the team.

"Everybody wants to know how many medals we are going to win," he said.

"We are not going to predict how many medals we are going to get overall. We are not going to predict which sports are going to get them.

"We are going to focus absolutely on making sure we give everybody the opportunity on the day to perform to their very best ability, that they all give 120 per cent."

Currie said he was impressed with the way the different sports had prepared their athletes for the Games.

His headquarters team had to provide the environment and inspiration for them to finish the job.

"The atmosphere is very positive in the team and the environment is great, so we are confident of being successful.

"What that will mean in terms of medals I have no idea, and to be quite honest I have no idea of how many medals we won in Kuala Lumpur - I haven't even looked - and I haven't gone down the list and thought about how many medals we can actually win now."

New Zealand actually won 34 medals at the Kuala Lumpur Games four years ago - eight gold, six silver and 20 bronze - with a team of similar size to that in Manchester.

Currie acknowledges that his team have the potential to be "extraordinarily successful" in Manchester, but he cited the withdrawal of Ian Winchester as an example of how expectations can quickly be reversed.

Winchester was viewed as a top medal contender in the men's discus, but damaged his shoulder when showing the best form of his career and returns to New Zealand today for surgery.

Although the New Zealand team's quarters on the edge of the athletes' village mean some extra walking to get to training and other facilities, Currie said the team had the best spot in the village.

"We've got modern rooms. We've got a nice grassy outlook, plenty of trees. We don't have music all hours of the night.

"People are very happy."

The way the New Zealand area had been transformed, with a giant America's Cup sail draped from the building, AA road signposts and other Kiwiana, had made it a "tourist spot" in the village.

"Very few other countries have done anything to say, 'This is our place'," Currie said.

"It's quite reassuring, but at the end of the day it's about performance.

"You don't know whether that will make the boat go faster, whether it will make a difference.

"But it's heartening, when people have flown 30 hours from New Zealand, we get them here and they walk around the corner and it's there - the Team New Zealand sign and the AA signs and the flags."

- NZPA

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