The fallout from marathoner Liza Hunter-Galvan's initial non-selection for the Beijing Olympics continued yesterday with the dumping of track and field convener of selectors John Bowden.
Bowden, who is also a cross-country and road selector for Athletics New Zealand, convened the panel which originally declined to nominate Texas-basedHunter-Galvan for next month's Games.
The 39-year-old achieved an A qualifying time last October in finishing fifth in Amsterdam with a personal best time of 2h 30m 40s.
However, a 51st placing at the 2004 Athens Olympics and subsequent poor showings at the Helsinki world championships and the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, counted against her as the ANZ selectors said they would only send potential top-16 finishers to Beijing.
An appeal, lodged with the Sports Tribunal of New Zealand, led to the selectors reconsidering their decision and Hunter-Galvan was named in the New Zealand team for the Games late last month.
The annual meeting of ANZ in Wellington yesterday replaced Bowden with Wellington's Tony Rogers, who was a national selector from 1994 to 2004, and convener from 1998-2000.
ANZ chief executive Scott Newman said the decision to dump Bowden, the selection panel convener for two years and a panel member for four years, had come from the ANZ council.
"John Bowden has been removed as convener and Tony joins the two incumbents. In terms of reasoning, I don't know _ it's for those who voted to determine what their reasons were," he said.
Newman said selection policy was under review.
Rogers, a former 1500m runner, made the Olympic final in Los Angeles 24 years ago. He would not be drawn on the reasons for Bowden's dumping.
"I think there are probably a number of issues which council decided they wanted to address," he said. "In the last few years there've been some quite dramatic selection shifts and omissions, but it's not just the Liza Hunter-Galvan thing."
Bowden, who is en route to the Olympics, could not be contacted for comment.
