Paralympics: Cash tight, but gold a real prospect for Kiwis

By GREG ANSLEY

SYDNEY - There was a lesson as Gavin Foulsham streaked around the training track at Sydney's Olympic Park yesterday.

For New Zealanders, just getting there is half the battle.

This year, Foulsham and the 41 other members of the Paralympics team were probably better funded than ever before with their sponsors including Telecom, Air New Zealand and the Sports Foundation.

But, as Paralympics New Zealand patron Paul Holmes bemoaned at a welcoming lunch for the team at the Sydney Town Hall, convincing sponsors to part with their money for one of the nations most successful sporting teams remains as gruelling as pentathlon.

At the same lunch former All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick threw in the jersey, shorts and socks he wore in his final test match for an auction that raised $A25,000 ($32,000) for Paralympics New Zealand.

Just before the team left for Sydney on a shoestring budget with three tonnes of equipment in five containers, an impromptu fundraiser by a Mitre 10 convention put a further $20,000 in the kitty.

Neither the team nor its chef de mission, Dave Currie, bemoans the fact that there is so little support for a team whose members include a clutch of world champions and between them hold 54 Paralympic, Commonwealth and world championship medals and 55 medals from other international competitions. That's just the way it is.

The sailing team, that was getting in its first full day of practice on Sydney Harbour yesterday, has a nightmare getting together from points as distant as Whangarei and Auckland for regular training.

So does the wheelchair rugby team.

And coaching and international competition are a constant problem for the athletes.

Gavin Foulsham, a pharmaceutical representative for Glaxo Wellcome, is luckier than most, with sponsorship from the company topping up other funding to allow him to compete five times in Australia and once each in the United States and Europe this year.

But he says competing overseas is a challenge for athletes who need all they can get.

"You can do all the training you want in New Zealand but you really do have to test it out and see how you're going," he says.

The 29-year-old Aucklander's own sport of wheelchair racing also lacks specialist coaches.

"One of the difficulties we have in New Zealand is that we don't have a lot of people who have knowledge about wheelchair racing.

"I'm coached by Martin Toomey, whose background is as a fitness trainer - he used to be the All Blacks fitness trainer - and who is involved in the High Performance Centre in Auckland.

"It's applying the basic training principles, but it's still a learning process.

"I guess the difficulty in New Zealand is numbers.

"It's something Paralympics New Zealand is working through at the moment, and I guess it's up to them."

All this makes our Paralympics record even more stunning.

At the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics our athletes won nine gold, six silver and three bronze medals.

This year, with the largest team ever, New Zealand is hoping for an even larger tally.

Foulsham, who this year won gold in the 1500m and 800m, and silver in the 400m at the Australian track and field championships, is among the potential medallists in Sydney.

It has been a long, hard road - literally.

For four years, since he missed selection for Atlanta, he has been pounding the hilly streets around his home in Meadowbank, initially building up his body over two to three hours a day, six days a week.

As the pace grew he was doing up to 180km a week.

He says he has his mother Una to thank for it all.

He was born with with two bones missing in his legs, which were amputated when he was four to prevent his spine twisting, confining him to a wheelchair for life.

In the backblocks behind Nelson where he grew up there were no facilities for disability, but for Foulsham that didn't count.

With artificial legs he played rugby, cricket, soccer and anything else that he could at school.

"I didn't want to be involved in any disability sport," he says,

"I didn't want to be involved with people with a disability. I grew up with everyone able-bodied.

"But my mum said to me that being in a wheelchair is like being in a piece of sporting equipment like a kayak or a bike.

"Once I accepted that that was what it was, and I had my first blast on one and realised how fast it was, it was all on."

Now he is one of probably 20 competitors who could win a medal in Sydney.

He'll race furiously in a contest of tactics and speed that over 1500m will be decided by 100ths or 1000ths of a second, and with only 2sec separating first and last.

"It's going to be crazy out there."

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