Winter Sports Funding Winners
Tagged in: In The News, Tall Blacks
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Toby Robson, Dominion Post
There are testing times ahead for basketball and bowls following Sparc’s latest round of funding announcements.
The government funding agency will invest $4.9 million in 15 sports in 2008 after receiving 22 applications for its contestable high performance money.
That represents a 12.5 per cent fall from $5.6 million last year, though the $3 million available for performance enhancement grants and scholarships remains the same.
The biggest winners were winter sports, with a focus on freestyle skiing, and canoeing with $2 million and $4 million, respectively, to be handed out over the next four years.
But basketball and bowls will not be singing from the rooftops.
Bowls bosses and their players face a nervous few months with their future funding to be decided on their performances at next year’s World Championships in Christchurch.
And Basketball New Zealand is mulling over a second successive year of significant cuts as the Tall Ferns and Tall Blacks prepare to launch their Beijing Olympics qualifying campaigns.
The Tall Blacks had their budget cut by $100,000 to $250,000 and the Tall Ferns by $50,000 to $350,000.
In both cases it creates a shortfall for their planned international campaigns and the Tall Blacks, especially, will need extra help to attend next year’s Olympic qualifier in Europe.
The men’s funding cut was clearly due to the Tall Blacks’ poor performance in the trans-Tasman series against Australia, which is fair enough.
However, the conditions of their new funding raise questions about whether Sparc is treading into the area of selecting national teams.
With such a heavy view toward the 2012 Olympics how can the Tall Blacks focus on their immediate task of qualifying for Beijing?
And does Sparc expect coach Nenad Vucinic to select development players for the European qualifying tournament?
“We have spoken strongly with them about where they are at. Whether they are at the top of their game or building toward 2012,” Sparc high performance manager Marty Toomey said. “We think it’s important they go there and give it their best shot, but we want them to be looking toward 2012.
“What we are trying to do is work with the sport to make the right decision both looking at short term and long term. We don’t want to be in the business of picking teams, but we also want them to be thinking strategically about the future.”
BBNZ president Barbara Wheadon said the funding cut was expected after the Tall Blacks results, but questioned whether that should have been the main criteria.
“It’s interesting that it’s based on performance rather than supportive so it’s always going to come and go. It presents some challenges for us to fund our programmes we have in place toward Beijing.
“The disappointment is the timing. It’s November and the Tall Ferns assemble in April, so there’s not a lot of time.”
Sparc invests an additional $11 million in the high performance programmes of nine targeted sports, including cycling, rowing, swimming and athletics, among others.
Neither golf nor tennis applied for high performance funding.
