The end of elite sports hubs?

A report into Biking NZ and Significant Functionality Activity NZ highlights a problematic feature of sports programmes, but CNZ says it is not resourced to do just about anything else, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.

 

“A study on Cambridge”

I visited athlete accommodation in Cambridge a number of many years ago. I hadn’t paid out attention to the evolution of Cambridge as a base for significant functionality athletics and my reference level for this variety of incredibly hot-housing of athletes was the 1984 movie about gymnast Nadia Comăneci. The accommodation appeared wonderful but was a significantly cry from the nostalgic see I experienced of our young medalist hopefuls education with old tires in their backyards, moms and dads and siblings by no means far too far away. Cambridge capabilities in the course of the Cycling NZ (CNZ) and Superior Effectiveness Activity NZ (HPSNZ) inquiry report released on Monday. The Bounce’s Dylan Cleaver clocks it in his piece published on the Spinoff, indicating the report is curiously also a study on the little city where rents are large and all people appreciates all people else.

Days of the centralised cycling programme “surely numbered”

This is not a swipe at a small city, but a critique of a program that removes athletes from their support systems and places them in superior-strain environments that never fit all people. 1 News athletics reporter Abby Wilson writes that “the days of the centralised cycling programme for our major athletes in Cambridge are surely numbered”. A number of CNZ regional progress hubs were marked for closure in 2021. At the time, Sid Cummings, lead coach of the hub in Invercargill (which has just re-opened) said he wasn’t confident what the growth pathway would now seem like but “it desires to be about the athletes first, over success and medals”.

Lather, rinse, repeat

This inquiry was initiated right after the dying of cyclist Olivia Podmore. Tragically, the 2018 Heron Report into the lifestyle at CNZ also concerned Podmore, with QC Mike Heron obtaining the young athlete was “pressured to give a fake account” to defend a coach and another athlete who ended up allegedly included in an personal partnership. Champion rower Eric Murray states the most up-to-date report validates all of Podmore’s considerations. Stuff’s Dana Johannsen does not conceal her annoyance at however one more report. She asks how it is that we are nonetheless looking through items like “focusing on athletes as people today first” in sports activities critiques. Alice Soper, creating for the NZ Herald (paywalled) skewers the really nature of the evaluate system alone.

Punching earlier mentioned our fat at what price tag?

The report states that “the centralised design has not been the panacea that some may possibly have hoped it would be” and that “HPSNZ has advised that it is encouraging a additional regional product, but CNZ advises it does not acquire funding for these types of an solution and can’t find the money for it.” Funding will normally be an situation in a tiny state but when funding is so carefully linked to performance and we’re so incredibly hooked up to the strategy of “punching higher than our weight” and our for every-capita medal tables, that will come at a cost. For the close friends and loved ones of Olivia Podmore, it’s a lot more than everyone should be asked to bear.