Canoeing: Crisis Sparcs row

Paul MacDonald alongside Ben Fouhy. Photo / Herald on Sunday

New Zealand's two most successful Olympic athletes, Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald, are set to be jettisoned as national canoeing coaches, leaving the former glory sport struggling with power struggles, splits and personality clashes.

Both have stayed silent to this point, warned by Canoe Racing New Zealand that speaking out would be a breach of contract. But now, with both out of contract and seemingly unlikely to gain another, they have decided to give their point of view.

CRNZ CEO Paula Kearns says the pair have not been dumped and a coaching review is still under way.

But another canoeing icon, Alan Thompson, a double gold medallist and current CRNZ board member, has also spoken out at what he feels is a Sparc-led strike against the trio. Ferguson and MacDonald are insistent they do not want to appear as having sour grapes'. They paint a picture of a slow campaign to oust the pair by CRNZ's Sparc-appointed executive, backed by Sports Minister Murray McCully, effectively ending the careers of New Zealand's best-performed Olympians.

"Paula Kearns told me that Sparc felt that we had had control of canoeing for the past 20 years and that we had done nothing with it," said MacDonald, until recently coach of the women's K2 and K4 teams. "I told her that I had had the women for six months only and in that time had taken them from B finals to A finals in difficult conditions.

"I don't know why this has happened - maybe it's just a case of out with the old and in with the new, or maybe they just want to pull it all to bits and start again - but I do know what has been going on.

"Ian Ferguson used to be national coach but has consistently been downgraded and disempowered, to the point that he pretty much had no control. I can tell you for a fact that he resigned from the team two weeks before we left for Europe this year - but Steven [his son, an Olympic paddler] persuaded him to go back.

"It was a horrible atmosphere and there were some major problems in the team. I was coaching girls I did not want to abandon, otherwise I'd have gone then, too."

Ferguson's four golds and one silver and MacDonald's three golds, one silver and one bronze are the best individual tallies by any athlete in New Zealand's long Olympic history, after their heroics at the 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Olympics. Few Olympians in any country, in any sport, can claim that kind of multiple success but now their careers seem set to be tainted by their exit as coaches, which they say has been quietly orchestrated by the sport that made them famous.

In the backdrop to their story is the Ben Fouhy saga - the undeniably talented paddler with a reputation for being difficult. He had a highly public spat with Ferguson, leading Fouhy to walk away from the sport before striking a deal with Sparc and CRNZ to compete at the world championships this year - but only after training apart from Ferguson and MacDonald and the rest of the canoeing team.

Ferguson and MacDonald were upset at the time with the way Fouhy was painted as the victim. Fouhy has fallen out not just with them but previous coaches in Mark Sutherland, Alan Thompson plus one other. He is now being managed by Grant Restall, formerly the manager of the New Zealand canoeing team.

However, the Fouhy affair is only part of the tale of the fall of Ferg and Macka - albeit the most public and damaging part - and, while the pair have also lifted the lid on some of that saga, they claim it wasn't the only dice loaded against them.

Ferguson and MacDonald are no babes in the wood. They admit their part in a CRNZ boardroom coup which saw a new board put in place last year after the country's canoeing clubs unanimously disapproved of the board's direction.

Ferguson has been working hard since 2002 to help build up canoeing again; helping to bring more athletes through. However, they say appointments at executive level were Sparc-led and have undermined their authority. They include high-performance manager Wayne Maher (formerly a coach with Rowing NZ) and another coach, multi-sporter Gordon Walker.

While Ferguson's and MacDonald's complaints may seem small individually, viewed in their entirety they support the contention that there has been a deliberate shift of power in the canoeing team.

There is now, say Ferguson and MacDonald, a split in canoeing ranks between them, another coach - Hungarian-born but New Zealand-based Andras Szabo - on one side and Kearns, Maher and Walker on the other; with paymasters Sparc and Sports Minister Murray McCully pulling the strings. Fouhy has also become entrenched in the new order.

"It's been a question of control and of a difference in philosophy," said MacDonald. "I like Wayne; we get on well. But professionally, we differ. Sparc seem set on taking canoeing down a sports science path - and that's Wayne's bag. He and they are set on having data, stats and science as the ruling philosophy for canoeing.

"I am not against sports science. I have been around it and used it all my life - but anyone who says that is the be-all and end-all of kayaking is kidding themselves. I think I know what I am doing when it comes to canoeing. So I was a bit of a rebel and we had some bad clashes over it."

But Maher gained more and more control. "The athletes didn't like it but they couldn't speak out - and won't now - because Wayne has the power. He is in charge of trials, competitions, appointments and the purse strings. Yet there is a massive difference in philosophy between him and some of the key players.

"I've kept my mouth shut for four years. I didn't want to go to the media. We had a job to do and I just wanted to avoid the unpleasantness and get on and do it. But I can tell you, it hasn't been good watching my mate [Ferguson] have his authority whittled away bit by bit.

"Piece by piece, that was taken off him and this was taken off him and, in the end, his hands were largely tied and Wayne was calling the shots. Ferg was having his mana soiled - and he wasn't allowed to defend himself. He was gagged; told it would be a breach of contract."

As an example, MacDonald said the star of the women's team, Erin Taylor, was injured ahead of the team's European campaign this year. MacDonald asked for a travelling reserve to be selected so the women's K4 team could compete if Taylor didn't recover. He said Maher vetoed the reserve but allowed Taylor to paddle in the K4 - but told Ferguson and MacDonald that "it was our arses on the line".

"That was the problem - we didn't have the control but it was our heads on the block and no one outside the team could see that."

The shift of power also extended to Walker. Originally a training partner of Taylor's, Walker was hired as an "intern" coach to Ferguson. However, he soon assumed more responsibilities, effectively becoming Taylor's coach, said MacDonald.

His control extended to whether, and how, the K4 team trained and MacDonald said: "I coached the K4 to 11th in the world after only 12 training sessions - and in not one of them was I allowed to push them 100 per cent."

His promising K2 team of Tenealle Hatton and Lisa Carrington finished 9th in the final - but were disadvantaged by a sudden programme change which saw the K4 (in which they also competed) raced only an hour ahead of the K2.

"We have a major problem with the high-performance manager, the CEO and the direction Sparc wants them to go. They seem to have a template for sports that they want canoeing to conform to."

MacDonald and Ferguson said Kearns warned the team not to protest about Fouhy's admission to the world championships in Poland earlier this year, even though he was not physically part of the team and had not been through the steps required to qualify.

"We were told that legal advice suggested that, if a challenge was made, Fouhy would probably lose the legal case. So we all had to accept him on the team - and Paula Kearns told us if an athlete challenged him, the Minister [McCully] would cut off funding."

MacDonald said he was then disgusted to learn that Fouhy had done a "sweetheart" deal with CRNZ this year which means he is guaranteed a place in the New Zealand team to Europe in 2011. He has been allowed, MacDonald claims, to fill the K1 1000m spot without trials - and anyone who wants to challenge him must travel to Europe and do so in World Cup events; a prospect few can afford or would relish, especially with Fouhy on a full training grant from Sparc.

There's no doubt the team in Poland disappointed at the world championships under Ferguson and MacDonald - something they do not hide from. They add, however, that they had full responsibility, but not full control.

MacDonald said the men's K4 team at one of the World Cup regattas in Europe this year made news when they failed to make the start of their event. The official explanation was that one of the crew had been ill.

"He was ill," MacDonald said. "But that wasn't the reason. They missed the start because they read a draft programme instead of the revised programme - so they turned up at heat 3, lane 5 instead of heat 2, lane 2 or whatever it was.

"I have always felt you tell the truth in those situations or it always comes back to burn you. But it wasn't our call."

CRNZ CEO Paula Kearns said Ferguson and MacDonald had not been dumped. There was a review of coaching requirements' which had not been finished.

She denied telling Ferguson that Sparc was out to get rid of him; or that Sports Minister Murray McCully had threatened to cut funding; and also denied saying that McCully found Ferguson's coaching of his son "unconscionable".

"But I can say that neither Wayne Maher or Gordon Walker are Sparc appointments, they are CRNZ appointments," she said. "I also can't speak for the minister but I can say a father coaching a son is a conflict of interest and there has been some issue with that among the [canoeing] athletes.

"As for the new way, well, there is a new way. There are all sorts of new things we are bringing in including sports science, new programmes and data. I can see how Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald have come to their views - but everything we do is based on the good of the athletes and the sport and we have had athlete feedback to that effect."

Ben Fouhy was a silver medallist at the Athens Olympics in 2004. There has never been any doubting his talent. Ironically, it was first recognised by Ferguson in 2003.

But canoeing insiders also tell stories of a fierce competitor almost obsessed with detail; with matters of hygiene and health; who can be indecisive, mulling over matters endlessly; prone to fits of temper and periods of marked gloom when things are not going right.

His intensity, they say, can make him a poor travelling companion and other team members tend to "walk on eggshells" when he is around".

"I've never been as verbally abused by another human being as I was by Ben Fouhy," MacDonald said. One tirade came at Rockhampton, Australia, at a training camp ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. "Ben asked where the team vehicle was. I said Ferg and Ally [Ferguson's wife, Alison, team cook] had taken it to get some food. He just went into orbit. He started yelling and screaming, saying he'd had a gutsful of the Ferguson family roadshow and that I didn't know shit and I didn't know what I was doing.

"A week later, he surprised Ally by asking if she minded taking him to the airport. He was going back to New Zealand; walking out. Eventually Fouhy made it to Beijing (he finished fourth in the K1 1000m) but MacDonald was wary of him.

"That was enough for me. I just decided to avoid him and look after other responsibilities and that's what he seemed to want too. But, when we were coming back on the plane after the Games, we were packing an overhead locker together.

"I had put a poster in there that was rolled up but not protected and I asked him to be careful of it. He just went off again. I said: Ben, you haven't spoken to me for three months and all I'm asking you to do is take care with the poster.'

"He got madder and madder and started having another go at me, saying I didn't know what I was doing. I told him that if he had listened, he would have won a gold medal.

"He was seething and said to me: I am glad I didn't win a gold medal because that would make me like you and I don't ever want to be like you. You are shit.' I am toning down the language that was used."

MacDonald said another team member told Fouhy sarcastically to talk louder so the rest of the plane could hear "and I could see his teeth clenching and his eyes glaze over; it was pretty scary".

In 2004, at the Athens Olympics, MacDonald said Fouhy "freaked out" in the athletes' village and asked Ferguson if he could leave. Ferguson, the Olympic canoeing coach, agreed.

"He couldn't bear being in the village," said MacDonald. "It just got too stressful for him. Ferg was trying to do the right thing, of course, and said he could stay somewhere else.

"That got Ferg in trouble with Dave Currie [chef de mission of the NZ team]. He asked for a meeting with them and, when they turned up, Ben tore a strip off him. Currie agreed to Ben leaving the village and later told Ferg that he understood what issues he was facing.

"That's the thing with Ben," said MacDonald. "Over the years, plenty of people have seen what he is like - but no one's done anything about it."

Ferguson can't understand that some people might think he had disadvantaged Fouhy.

"For a start, I wasn't coaching him and I wasn't setting the rules. Everyone in the world has to earn the right to compete in the worlds - even the world champion has to go to qualifying to go back there. No one escapes.

"Ben's a good athlete. But he doesn't like racing, or rather he doesn't like losing. Steven got sixth in the world championships last year. Ben didn't make the final this year. I got him to world champion - but he doesn't listen to me any more."

Ferguson adds that he would happily walk away from the sport if it was in good hands.

"I think Wayne has made some mistakes. Maybe Gordon Walker will be a good coach. He's been in the sport for six months.

"If you look around the world at successful canoeing nations, they have experienced hands on board - coaches who were former racers."

MacDonald says: "Wayne Maher and me and Ferg are on different paths," he said. "Wayne's a nice guy but, reading between the lines, I am sure he will be doing his utmost to have us removed."

Walker, a former multi-sport athlete, is the only CRNZ elite coach with a contract at present "so the sport of canoeing is being led by a footballer [Kearns was a former CEO of NZ Football previously], a rower and multi-sporter.

"It's tragic for the sport."