Sparc identifies sports with Olympic "medal potential"

Boxing and weightlifting are the big winners from the Government sports funding agency Sparc's review of the country's performance at last year's Athens Olympics.

The national sports investment body yesterday released a report that identified sports with "multiple medal potential" as the key to boosting future Olympic success.
Titled "Reigniting the Sparc", the report identified "traditional" New Zealand sports - athletics (138 available medals), cycling (42), sailing (33), and swimming (97), as well as boxing (44), canoeing (48), shooting (51) and weightlifting (44).

Sparc chief executive Nick Hill said that was likely to mean greater investment in those sports in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"This is probably good news for the likes of boxing and weightlifting," Hill said.

"The logic is exactly the same as Australia's, and that is to look at where the medals are.

"If you take swimming, cycling, athletics, they are sports where individuals can win multiple medals, so your talent pool does not have to be as big."

But Hill quickly cautioned that the onus was on the sports' national bodies to provide the infrastructure.

A total of $19 million was put into the Olympic team's build-up to Athens, putting the five medals (three gold, two silver) at $3.8 million each.

Hill said it was money well spent, with 72 athletes involved in 20 sports achieving fourth to eighth-place finishes in Athens, showing a far greater depth of talent than in Sydney four years earlier.