Swimming: Funding could sink or swim on results

Moss Burmester and company could be swimming for their sport's funding future when the world champs begin in Rome tonight.

Swimming was the only one of six 'targeted' Olympic sports not to bring home a medal from Beijing and Sparc is finding it harder to play a straight bat to allegations aquatics was delivering little bang for buck.

At a media briefing in Auckland last week, Sparc high performance manager Marty Toomey was questioned directly about why swimming remained in an elite funding bracket.

Swimming received $6.88 million in the four years leading to Beijing and will receive $1.65 million in 2009 and 2010. That is more than both athletics ($1.55 million) and triathlon ($1.45 million), which have enjoyed considerably more success on the world stage.

More significantly, it is light years ahead of kayaking which has to join every other sport in New Zealand to apply for 'contestable' funding from an annual $6 million pot, yet they have consistently challenged for medals at pinnacle events.

However, a mid-cycle review at the end of next year could see that funding re-allocated and nobody denies that swimming, in particular, is in the gun.

Toomey said the funding was largely based on what Sparc thought at the time would be medal prospects but acknowledged swimming needed to start bringing home results on the world stage.

He also expressed disappointment that only two female swimmers, Hayley Palmer and Alannah Jury, qualified for the world champs - Jury raced in the 10km open water event - and surmised that something must have happened at nationals that "didn't get them across the line".

"That's not the case," said New Zealand head coach Jan Cameron from Rome, without elaborating.

Cameron was quick to defend her programme against the charge of underperformance.

"We have been producing results and have improved every single year and have robust policies every year. Sparc are recognising that we are moving forward, not just one person, but progressing as a team. I know we have their full support ... and they wouldn't be funding us if we didn't have the systems in place."

Toomey is too smart to give swimming a public dressing down and is quick to praise its improved governance, high-performance programme and coaching structures under Cameron. However, there is growing frustration there has not been an Olympic or world championship long-course medal since Trent Bray won bronze in the 200m freestyle in 1998.

Sparc will this week keep a keen eye on progress at Rome, where Burmester, in the 200m butterfly, is New Zealand's only genuine medal prospect. Corney Swanepoel (100m butterfly) and Glenn Snyders (100m breaststroke) are chances of making the final.

Compare swimming's situation to that of kayaking, which has won multiple medals at world champs and Olympics yet missed out on targeted sport status.

Max Walker, father of Beijing Olympian Mike and a passionate advocate of the sport, said kayaking would love some of the money thrown at swimming.

He believed it could be used two-fold: to tap into the enormous kayaking talent pool in the surf lifesaving clubs around the country; and to fund a 10-week European campaign next year, comparable to those waged by the rowers, that would be beneficial for London two years later.

As an illustration that highlights the difference between the haves and have-nots of New Zealand sport, Mike Walker now finds himself $2000 in hock to his father for freight costs after his new kayak arrived from Poland.

That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have a great big hole in it from, the Walkers suspect, a poorly driven forklift. It would be small beer in a sport like rowing that had "rock star" status but every dollar is stretched in kayaking so it has come as a body blow to Walker.

Sparc will undergo a mid-cycle review next year that will look closely at the return on investment and determine funding.