KEY POINTS:
The riches of professional sport are robbing us of the very thing that made us great.
In the early 90s I strongly believed that our athletes would make a seamless transition into the world of professional sport.
That ruthless and often brutal competitiveness, traits synonymous with athletes from this country, would ensure this.
It never occurred to me that future generations of great athletes from New Zealand, a country built so strongly on honesty and hard work, would be so vulnerable to the pure deception and hollowness that money offers.
I know how quickly the culture changed for the worse as I, among others, was at the centre of spreading the decay.
In 1995 the rugby union went professional and the Super League concept was born.
Almost overnight it was game on for young and old, with little or no regard for the true values of sport.
Secret meetings were held with star players in hotel rooms with businessmen who couldn't be named.
It was a bull market and New Zealand woke up to find its national sport being played for money.
The landscape of sport in New Zealand had changed forever.
Although I am and have always been drawn to this industry to assist athletes perform at their very best - as opposed to screwing every last cent out of the market for them - it has taken nearly 14 years to understand the relationship between the two. I now believe the events surrounding 1995 have hurt us badly, and continue to do so.
Just because professional athletes get paid to play their sport doesn't take away from the fact that they still have to win.
And to win big in professional sport, all the planets must align. If there are deficiencies or frailties of any kind they will be ruthlessly exposed.
I strongly believe that the approach to money in professional sport, especially in our national summer and winter codes, is slowly but surely killing off two great attributes that have been such powerful assets to New Zealanders: desperation and initiative.
For the great athletes of the world, whether from team or individual sports, desperately wanting to be the greatest in the world is the end product of everything they do. Money is a byproduct and something they enjoy in very large quantities, but in no way is it the overriding objective.
Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s were driven by the number 6, Tiger Woods by the number 19 and Lance Armstrong by the number 7.
If you offered Hamish Carter a cheque for a million dollars in place of his Olympic Gold Medal, in compensation for all the prize money he missed out on by pursuing his dream of being the best in the world, he would laugh in your face.
I am sure if you asked Jonah Lomu to replace many of his international endorsements with a World Championship medal he would. He so clearly loved his sport and desperately wanted to be the greatest.
This is where some great athletes and teams in New Zealand are being compromised by outside forces, because they don't have the clear understanding of what it is they are in sport to achieve.
Jordan and the Bulls had to compete against the gruelling playing schedule dictated to them by the NBA and its need to maximise money through TV audiences and crowd attendances.
But they accepted it, lived with it and rose above it by never losing focus on their dream to be champions year after year.
The NBA is littered with players who are attracted to the NBA by the money and lifestyle but not by that all-consuming drive to be the greatest.
I increasingly get that same feeling watching some athletes in New Zealand. A desperation to be the best in the world above all else is urgently needed if World Championship status is to be achieved consistently.
The second and equally destructive component is that the money available is used in ways that sap athletes of their initiative. There seems to be an insatiable appetite to sanitise athletes.
Under the umbrella of catch phrases like "protection of the brand" and "corporate sponsorship requirements", many athletes are told precisely what to wear, what to say and what not to say to whom.
This erodes athletes' ability to think for themselves. It is wrong to think that this is how corporate sponsors want athletes to behave. The public wants real people, not ones that are contrived.
The more human and natural athletes are the better they will perform, the more the public will trust them and, as a consequence, the more companies will want to be involved with them.
Nike doesn't sponsor Jordan, Woods, Armstrong and the Brazilian football team because they toe the line. They pay them cumulatively hundreds of millions of dollars because they are the greatest at what they do and millions of people relate to them.
The New Zealand sporting public needs to think about what they are watching so they can choose whether to fund professional sport through Sky subscriptions and ground attendances, or whether they take their hard earned dollars and valuable time to something that is more consistent with their personal values.
The athletes also need to understand clearly what their real motivations are.
Otherwise they will find out in the hardest way possible that ending a sporting career with nothing but some dollars in the bank is a very poor cousin to a lifetime of achievement with a few more dollars in the bank as a bonus.
If nothing changes, the sporting public will become increasingly frustrated. More athletes will end careers confused and bitter, and World Championship titles will be harder to achieve.
* Roger Mortimer represented many All Blacks during the transition to professionalism. He manages Olympic champions Hamish Carter and Sarah Ulmer and three-time world rowing champion Mahe Drysdale.
