By SUZANNE McFADDEN
Kiwi athletes have just been slipped a little extra in their wallets as a mark of their talent.
No, it isn't dollars, but it is a credit card, of sorts.
The plastic swipe card stamped with the sports star's mugshot could be the key to his or her future success.
But critics of the plastic maintain all that it can buy won't solve New Zealand's sporting woes.
Athletes with the cards - all 1500 of them - are now members of the new Academy of Sport set up by the New Zealand Sports Foundation.
The chosen - from 12-year-old gymnasts through to Olympic champion Rob Waddell - will receive coaching, free sports science and medical support, and education advice from three academy centres around the country.
They will drop in with the card, swipe it at the front desk and a computer will reveal what services they are entitled to.
The swipe cards have been processed and some recipients already have them in their pockets. Some athletes will not know they are part of the academy until they get their cards in the mail.
The first centre - the Northern region, with its branches in Auckland and the Waikato - opens this next week. Central and Southern units open in Wellington and Dunedin in the New Year.
Since our dismal showing at the Sydney Olympics - one gold medal and three bronze - the academy has already come under flak from those arguing it is the wrong direction for elite sport to take.
Some critics believe the Government's money - $16 million over four years - should have gone towards a bricks-and-mortar replica of the Australian Institute of Sport.
Others wanted to keep the status quo - to have their own sports still bulk-funded, but with a cash increase.
But Chris Ineson, executive director of the Sports Foundation, remains adamant that the academy is the right way to go.
He acknowledges it is not the answer to everything - it alone will not drag New Zealand out of its Olympic doldrums.
"The academy is part of a package. There still has to be top coaching and top international competition for our athletes," he said. "But this is the future. We want all of New Zealand to get behind this - if we don't we can wave the ship goodbye forever. We won't be on it."
Mr Ineson says the foundation was not prepared to build an institute from the ground up.
"There is an argument in this country that we should have an [Australian institute type] set-up here, but the answer is no.
"It would have cost us $150 million. Even the Australians realise that wasn't the answer - they had to deliver funds and services locally rather than make all their athletes live in Canberra.
"We tendered out contracts for facilities and services. No one entity could deliver what we wanted in its entirety, so we decided to have the three centres with two satellites - Karapiro for rowing and the Wanganui velodrome for cycling.
"We've ended up with more than $130 million in assets with the facilities we are using. Why build more?"
Foundation members travelled the world to investigate the best way to help the country's top sportspeople.
They were convinced when they saw similar academy set-ups in Britain and France, countries that reaped rewards in Sydney.
The Government has dedicated $16 million for the academy, but the foundation wants an extra $5 million from corporate and local sources, which would cover the cost of running the centres.
The ministerial review of sport, headed by teacher and former All Black John Graham, will determine how much more money the foundation will receive for other projects, such as coaching.
Mr Ineson hopes the 10 per cent of the budget dedicated to developing coaches in the past - around $1.2 million - will be doubled.
Athletes will be graded in four categories - development, junior, international and world class. That will determine the level of services they can receive at the centres.
It is a process that will start with young people with aptitude for a sport being noticed, coached and encouraged, continue through the club level and on into the academy for those who develop.
There will be benefits outside sport for the athletes, such as the Athlete Career and Education programme, developed at the Australian institute.
Wellington's Central Institute of Technology will offer every carded athlete a scholarship to study on its campus.
"Those cards are worth their weight in gold," Mr Ineson said. "A kid in Auckland could go on holiday to Wellington or Dunedin, walk in with the card and get all the services they are entitled to right there."
He argues with critics who say the academy is not centred around the athlete, but is instead an administrator's paradise.
"Of course it is all about the athletes. Before we had 650 athletes - now it's up to 1500. We had 14 sports and now it's 30.
"And it is coach-driven, too. Coaches from all the sports will work together and cross-fertilise their ideas. Yes, we are playing catch-up. But we're doing the right thing.
"Even the Australians acknowledge we are doing some things better than them. Our academy is under one umbrella, and they have eight separate entities."
The Northern academy - a consortium of UniSport, the Auckland University of Technology, the new Millennium Centre and Waikato University - is still looking for a full-time chief executive after 1976 Olympic gold medallist Ramesh Patel decided to stick with New Zealand Hockey.
As well as their contracts to provide academy services, these facilities will also offer services to others, including the public.
New Zealand's high performers will still get extra money, even though that system was criticised after Sydney when athletes who had had their every need paid for failed.
Mr Ineson, for one, was not afraid to lambast those athletes publicly when, after the Paralympics, he observed that the paralympians were the one group of athletes the foundation gave money to who never complained.
"They could actually show some of our able-bodied athletes a little bit about inspiration, a little about sheer bloody-minded determination ... instead of complaining and grizzling to everybody else about why you're not bringing it home."
He has made no secret that the Sports Foundation criterion for success is medals - "at the end of the day, it's medals that count."
He can be sure, then, that whether or not the New Zealand Academy of Sport is eventually judged a success, most of us will measure it by just that simple, basic yardstick.
Sport: Controversial academy about to open its doors
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