Olympics: No room for complacency, NZOC boss says

After New Zealand spent $20 million on each gold medal won in Beijing, New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) president Barry Maister today joined the call for more to be poured into high performance sport.

Maister, also an Olympic selector, told reporters the NZOC was happy with the three gold, one silver, five bronze haul from Beijing.

Medals came off the back of Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc) investing $60 million into its high performance programme since 2004.

That worked out at $20 million per gold, or $667,000 for each medal.

"We're happy," Maister said, when asked how he felt about the return.

"We can never be totally happy, the world is moving on in terms of performance and if we stay still we will get further behind, so what that means is that in our review -- which will take place when we get back -- we have to look for another edge."

If New Zealand got complacent, the result in London 2012 would not be as good, he said.

Sports that had sustained international programmes would succeed, the others -- mainly smaller sports -- would not, he said.

"The notion of athletes reaching a selection standard on a one-off basis somewhere in the world isn't going to be good enough," he said.

There would need to be a sustained international competition and programme over time, he said.

Maister expressed general disappointment in team sports -- football, hockey and basketball.

Football achieved expectations while basketball needed more height and athleticism, he said.

"We had the best men's hockey team we've had for years, possibly the best ever. They put themselves into a very good position to succeed and didn't do so, and that's disappointing."

Women's hockey was "extremely disappointing", he said.

He was expressing a personal view, and sports needed the chance to put their side of the story.

Qualifying via the Oceania competition might no longer be enough to win selection, as it was not a good measure of competitiveness, Maister said.

Australia was looking more and more to qualifying via Asia.

"We're going to look at (Oceania), and say that's not going to be enough in itself, but that depends a great deal on what Australia does, if they're in there and we can beat Australia -- as the women's hockey team did -- then we can say that's a reasonable benchmark."

Sparc boss Peter Miskimmin has already said more money would be needed to sustain levels reached at Beijing.

"If we do nothing more, if there's no extra investment above what we have now, we will go backwards," he told NZPA last week.

Sport and Recreation Minister Clayton Cosgrove said work was already underway to build on "New Zealand's most successful Olympic Games performance in 20 years".

Results showed the high performance strategy was working, he said.

"The Government's high performance strategy needs to be taken to the next level as New Zealand looks to London 2012. We have got the formula right, but let's look at how it can be honed even further.

He had asked Sparc to provide a "robust case" of what was needed.

"All areas will need to be looked at, including funding," Mr Cosgrove said.

"I have asked Sparc to focus on funding levels and talent identification as part of their debrief process with national sport organisations. This means that as well as supporting our existing elite athletes, we need to identify and develop our young gifted athletes coming through, who will become our next generation of champions.

Sports are about to start a post-Beijing debrief and will be sharing their findings and London 2012 plans with Sparc by December.

Australia forked out close to A$17m ($21.03m) in taxpayers money for every gold medal.