Motorsport: Academy punches on as funding gets tougher

Nick Cassidy during his TRS days. He was an Academy product. Photo / Photosport

Following years peppered with names like Brendon Hartley, Earl Bamber, Richie Stanaway, Hayden Paddon, Mitch Evans, Nick Cassidy and Shane van Gisbergen who, like 116 other young motorsport hopefuls, are graduates of the MotorSport New Zealand Elite Academy, the 2017 week wrapped up recently giving the Trustees of the Scholarship Trust great belief in the young people that have once again proved that this country produces some very fine, exceptionally competitive, focused and talented potential stars of the future.

Out of that number of Graduates who have passed through the Academy since the very first one to be held in 2004 (and not including the class of 2017) 34 of them have competed internationally overseas, almost 30 % of the total. A remarkable figure in this most competitive of sporting disciplines.

The Elite Academy does not set out to make these young people better at actually operating a racing or rally car, they have proved they can do that by being considered for selection to the Academy, but it does set out to try and hone the skills that will be needed to rise above the many thousands of other hopefuls from around the world who seek the same goal and to encourage personal development.

No other country has a programme to match it and certainly no other country has any motorsport programme in place that has turned out so many internationally recognised high achievers, consistently, over such a time period.

One thing the Academy does not do is actually raise any funding for the graduates.
The tools to do that on an individual basis are part of the curriculum but the Academy and the Scholarship Trust that runs it are continually searching for funding simply to allow the programme to continue. It is a never-ending search and like many charitable trusts that search is getting wider and very much harder.

It is easy to criticise the funding that other sports get, be it to tide over a team in order to pacify those who may be thinking of leaving for greener pastures, or for an Olympic campaign or to train athletes to attain the highest levels. I will not join in that critiscism as it seems to me that if they can get their hands on public money for support then good for them. They are doing the job.

It is an old story and one that has been brought up regularly but I will never cease to be amazed at just how little recognition is given to our motorsports athletes and how little funding is made available to them. In fact for "little" read "NONE".

The question of them actually being athletes at all is now surely a spurious one and has been debunked multiple times so it cannot be that.

The sport itself is formally recognised by the International Olympic Committee and New Zealand has supplied many a championship winner as well as the occasional world champion and winners of all three of the sports 'Blue Riband' events, so it cannot be that.

Perhaps because it is seen as a 'rich kids' sport? I am not sure there have been too many Kiwis that fall into that bracket over the years, in fact very much the opposite.

Perhaps then because it is seen as a 'team' sport with commercial backing and engineering excellence and inventiveness heavily involved. I think recent international events have demonstrated that those parameters are certainly not applicable and no bar to considerable public funding.

The funding issue is a problem for most sports, always has been, always will be, and some sports grab the public imagination and manage to prise open the government purse strings better than others but surely some recognition should be given to the achievements of our motorsports international ambassadors and then follow the DNA back to see just how they managed to get to that position. The MotorSport New Zealand Scholarship Trust 'Elite Academy' will figure highly in that DNA trace.

It is an important step in any young Kiwi's motorsport career and a step that must not be lost or our sport will be very much the poorer for it.

I really do not like the term 'punching above our weight' as it seems demeaning while possessing an underdog attitude but if the meaning is that our motorsport competitors and technicians have a disproportionate influence internationally than this country's size would suggest, then who could argue?

As a disclaimer Bob McMurray, along with Lyall Williamson, Tony Herbert, David Turner and MSNZ President Wayne Christie, is a Trustee of the MotorSport New Zealand Scholarship Trust, the entity that administers the Elite MotorSport Academy.