KEY POINTS:
Britain's golden sporting age may deliver New Zealand an unexpected fillip.
Olympic Committee boss Barry Maister revealed yesterday that high performance centres in the United Kingdom were trying to lure New Zealand sports to set up bases there in preparation for the London Games of 2012.
The British
Government, basking in the glow of its best Olympic medal showing in a century, has funded the establishment of about 15 centres of excellence, providing top-class training facilities and accommodation for a wide range of sports.
"These people are offering incentives for our sports to set up bases there," Maister said yesterday. "I think these are the things we have to look at."
New Zealand, which invests about $33 million a year into high-performance sport through Government funding agency Sparc, has had its best medal haul since 1992, scooping nine medals, including three golds.
But Maister says that to see continued success or improvement more investment will be needed.
Britain has poured £265 million ($691 million) of taxpayers' and National Lottery money into high-performance sport over the past four years, an investment which has yielded a formidable 47 medals, including 19 golds.
"The investment into British sport from UK Sport is unbelievable, not just in terms of athletes but with these high-performance centres across the UK," said Maister.
He would be talking to sports over the next few weeks to determine whether bases in the UK centres - or elsewhere in Europe - would be beneficial in the lead-up to London 2012.
"It's the high-performance directors who need to make a call," said Maister. "We're the facilitators, we can't determine it for them."
The NZOC, in conjunction with Sparc, will review the Olympic team's performance over the coming months. While no official medal targets were made public before the games, Maister said yesterday that a target of 8-10 medals was talked of privately. "We thought that was good."
While it was pleasing then to have banked nine medals, he said there were some aspects of New Zealand's performance that were less than satisfying. The team sports, for instance, had been disappointing, with none of the soccer, hockey or basketball teams progressing.
"Teams sports have been the disappointing element in terms of their end results. You've got to look at them individually though."
Soccer, he hoped, would be able to use the experience as a springboard to 2012; the men's hockey team was the best-prepared team New Zealand have had in years but did not seize the opportunity they had; while the win-less women's hockey team was "extremely disappointing".
As for basketball, he said, "It's a tough, tough sport and we look at that and think we need more height and athleticism in the team".
Maister said sports such as weightlifting, badminton and synchronised swimming had struggled too and said that in future it may not be good enough just to qualify for the Olympics. What was needed was sustained international programmes where the athletes were regularly competing on the world stage.
"Quite frankly if you haven't got that then you are going to go backwards."
While some sports such as swimming had made great progress since Athens and enjoyed some terrific performances, the fact was that the world's best had moved on too.
To achieve the progress needed, then, swimming could well be one of the sports which would benefit from basing its athletes in the UK or Europe, he said.
British Swimming has established five intensive-training centres funded by UK Sports at Bath, Stockport, Loughborough, Swansea and the University of Stirling.
Rowing too could be another sport which benefited, particularly seeing as its rowers had to travel to Europe so much to get top-class competition.
"We spend a lot of time in Europe and the cost of that keeps going up enormously," said Rowing NZ's high-performance manager, Andrew Matheson. "We're going to have to increase funding just to do what we do now." It would certainly look at the UK possibilities.
But Bike NZ's high-performance manager Mark Elliott was not so enthusiastic. "England's a bit wet to be honest," he said. "We're looking for good weather and good tracks. There'll be times we'll be in there.
"We've just spent our build-up between Ghent in Belgium and Bordeaux. It's been fantastic.
"It's what you know but also where's the best racing? Not in England. The best racing's in Belgium, the best training is in the south of France. One of the best tracks in the world is in Bordeaux."
