Rowing, cycling and yachting winners in HPSNZ funding

Rowing pair of Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, during the medal ceremony after winning gold at the London Olympics. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Rowing, cycling and yachting are the big winners in the latest round of funding announcements for New Zealand sport, with the three sports scooping nearly 40 per cent of High Performance Sport New Zealand's investement spend in 2015.

Of the $33.5 million HPSNZ will invest in New Zealand Sport next year, just over $13m of that will be directed to rowing ($5.115m), cycling ($4.6m) and yachting ($3.4m). The three sports, which form the top tier of HPSNZ's targetted funding model, all received healthy increases from their 2014 funding as the crown agency continued to place its faith in the proven medal sports.

Yachting received the biggest increase, with a $600,000 boost to their NZL Sailing programme. Rowing has lifted $315,000 to $5.1m and cycling has earned an extra $300,000 to see its 2015 handout worth $4.6m.

Others to receive funding increases were athletics, the women's rugby sevens programme and Paralympics New Zealand.

"The outstanding performances by athletes from our key targeted sports has given us increased confidence that our strategy is right and that we're tracking well towards the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games," said HPSNZ chief executive Alex Baumann.

"While we are very pleased with these performances we still have work to do as we continue to drive our targeted approach with the aim of increasing the probability of international success when it matters the most."

Swimming, triathlon and the hockey men's programme are among those to have decreases in investment after not meeting all of their performance goals.

After the well-documented issues at Swimming New Zealand, the organisation can probably consider themselves lucky to only drop $100,000 from the $1.5m they received this year. Triathlon paid for their Commonwealth Games disappointment with a $150,000 reduction in funding, while the men's Black Sticks have lost $250,000 next year with their funding reduced to $750,000 and nothing on the map for 2016.

"We had to make some tough calls but while some sports have had reductions, we have retained a sufficient level of investment to ensure we don't cut too deeply into their ability to deliver results in the future because we do believe these sports have the strategies, programmes and people in place to make gains in the future," Baumann says.

National sport organisations receive four, two or one year funding. There will be further investment decisions at the end of 2015 to determine 2016 investment levels for some sports, and fine-tune amounts leading in to the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games that year.

Baumann said that over the four-year funding cycle to the end of 2016, HPSNZ will invest almost $130 million direct to the national sport organisations it supports.

In addition to that, HPSNZ is providing another $72 million in support that goes directly to athletes through grants and scholarships, as well as expert advice.