Sports Minister Murray McCully wants advice in the next few months on how to set up a specialised organisation to chase national targets of three world cups - in rugby, cricket and netball - and at least 10 medals in the 2012 Olympics.
He is also pushing for more money from business sponsors as Olympic chiefs plead for double the $60 million they received for the last campaign in Beijing last year.
The changes are part of National's drive to push the emphasis in sports policy on to competing and winning, rather than participation and healthy lifestyles under Labour.
The Government is overhauling sports structures from the top down in an attempt to reverse years of often disappointing results in top competitions, from the Rugby World Cup to some favoured athletes and teams in recent Olympic and Commonwealth Games.
Mr McCully has questioned the wide brief of Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc), which supports the country's top sportspeople and tries to increase sports participation at school and club level.
He said it made sense to separate the two jobs, as they required such different approaches.
Some national sports organisations have expressed scepticism about creating a new structure for high-performance sport.
But change looks likely from Sparc's new board, appointed by the Government last month and headed by former Brierley Investments chief executive Paul Collins.
In the 1990s, Mr Collins chaired the Sports Foundation, an independent body which ran high-performance sport and secured corporate sponsorship for many top athletes.
Its functions were taken over by Sparc in 2003.
One of Mr Collins' first jobs will be to find cost savings at Sparc in response to scathing criticism from Prime Minister John Key, who last year accused the organisation of wasting taxpayers' money.
Also in the Government's sights are the 17 regional sporting trusts, which receive $20 million a year and will have an extra $8 million to spend on sport for school-aged children next year.
Mr McCully said he was well aware some sports clubs regarded the trusts as a bureaucratic waste of money.
