Monday, 13 August 2012

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​On the first page of this blog, just a week and a day ago,  I wrote about my aunt Pat and uncle Jim in Dumfries, Scotland, and of their grandson, the eleven-year-old Conan Lee McLaughlan and his weightlifting achievements. Sadly, Jim was taken into hospital shortly after that, and pneumonia was mentioned.

Today, I have an email from Pat, saying that Jim came home on FridayPat.  Pat continued, "They have put him on Warffarin and it has to be checked by the nurse every so often to get his levels right, so tomorrow (Monday) he has to go for his first test and the nurse will tell us how much medication he has to take.  Once they get this all sorted out the nurse will come to the house and do it. . . . .  He is ok, still very tired but up and about.  Apart from all that everything is back to normal. . . . .

I just loved the next bit -  "I let Conan-Lee read [your blog] and he was quite happy to see his name up on the screen, especially when he found it was coming from N.Z.  Wow! "

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Watching the Olympics on telly (we're now at the closing ceremony), it's such a pleasure to constantly hear the name of our town here, Kawerau. Of course, I'm talking about the New Zealand commentaries, and the references to the silver medal won by Sarah Walker in the women's BMX final. From a town of some 7,000 people, she has made everyone here so proud! And then we had Lisa Carrington, of neighbouring Whakatane, who delivered New Zealand its fifth gold medal at the London Olympics in the women's 200m canoe sprint at Eton Dorney. What a brilliant duo from such a small area!

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​However, according to Sean Martin, "New Zealand's Olympic success in London has come at a price - $180 million to be precise.

That's the amount of Government money that has been ploughed into high performance sport programmes, including facilities and infrastructure, in the four-year period since Beijing." It appears that some $90 million of that was spent directly on the preparation for the London Olympics.

Minister of Sport Murray McCully said on a television political at the weekend that next year the Government will fund $60 million to high performance sport. Not all of the money will go to Olympic sports.

HPSNZ allocated around 70 percent of its funding to nine sports targeting Olympic medal and world champions success.

Six are Olympic disciplines - athletics, cycling, rowing, yachting, swimming and triathlon.

HPSNZ funding for targeted Olympic sports 2009-2012:

 

Rowing    $19.181m total;   5 medals @ $3.832m per medal.

Cycling    $18.332m;           3 @ $6.110m each.

Sailing     $11.299m;           2  @ $5.650m each.

Athletics  $7.269m;;            1  @ $7.269m.

Canoeing $4.308m;            1  @$4.308m.​

Equestrian $4.241m;          1  @$4.241m.

Swimming $7.476m.           No medal.

Hockey      $7.145m.           No medal.

Triathlon    $6.932m.           No medal.

Football     $1.572m.           No medal.

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I have to say that I was taught that sporting was more about competing than winning medals. I'd rather see no increase in the funding for high performance sport, and if the country has such money to spare for sport at all, then put it into our grassroots development, where children can learn to enjoy sport and games. Do not enter into a money-race with other countries to try to win more medals; remember the space race and the armaments race where large countries kept increasing their funding - running their countries into massive debt. To me this approach of our Sports Ministers smacks of a similar venture on a smaller scale. As we increase our national expenditure on high performance sport, so other countries will do likewise.