Qualification, nomination and expected finish are the three pieces that need to click together to give a New Zealand athlete a shot. Qualification processes are run by international sports organisations, nomination then put through by their national counterpart and finally expected finish is the requirement of the New Zealand Olympic Committee. Athletes must be projected to finish in the top 16 of their chosen event at this Games or top eight at the next, in order to get their place on our Olympic team.
The issue with this process lies within the myth of fairness. Life isn’t and neither are sports. When it comes to step one, qualification, our athletes are at a huge geographic disadvantage. They must venture around the country and the world, in order to find worthy competition to enable them to grow. This isolation comes with a hefty price tag, one they must pay themselves if they have the audacity to excel outside of a traditional New Zealand sport.
To be defined as a traditional sport really means that it was played predominantly by white men. As their preferences are what much of our national sports infrastructure was built around. When the reset post the Sydney Games was introduced, priority was given to sports we had a strong track record in. Thus further entrenching these traditions. The result saw previously well-funded sports receive yet more funding, making it even harder for those emerging sports and their athletes to break through.
It’s not just the overall funding that is political, so too are individual nominations. Is it any wonder that it was the beleaguered Cycling New Zealand who were at the centre of this latest case? A sport, well documented to not understand how to support their athletes’ mental wellbeing, shown to still be out of step with best practices. It’s embarrassing at this point that a sport positioned as a jewel in our Olympic crown still seems to be operating so far outside of the gold standard.
If an athlete has done their part, qualified internationally and been nominated at home, there is still some guessing to go on about how they will perform. The expected finish in their sport is the final hurdle to their selection. This is supposed to be an attempt at fairness but not all sporting competitions are created equal. It raises the subjective element of value for the New Zealand public. What’s worth more, a New Zealander competing in a big ticket event? Or winning gold in a less hotly contested category? The answer to that is subjective which is why there are always storylines around these selections.
The biggest change post the Sydney Olympic Games was really our operating budget. Money for medals is the equation underpinning our current processes. The outcome we have seen is that what you water, grows. Our decisions up until this point have created and entrenched the sports we perform in. If we chose differently, we would likely excel differently too. If we continue to build our future plans by solely deferring to our past, we miss developing all that our Olympic team could be. Balance is better is what we tell our athletes. Perhaps we need to tell their selectors that too.
