Starting at the top

Jossi Wells competes in the ski competition and places 4th at the World Superpipe Championships at Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah. Photo / TRANZ

They're young, talented, and, in some cases, they're loaded. New Zealand's crop of elite teenage sportspeople is growing by the month. With the backing of big-name sponsors, the guidance of experienced coaches, and the attention of foreign media, they're getting more opportunities than ever before.

Many have cut short their schooling, such is their dedication to becoming professional sportspeople. They're committed to intensive training, and spend much of the year at competitions and tournaments in far-flung destinations.

Some of these promising young athletes are competing in sports which don't often attract much attention, such as skiing and squash.

But when they win big, they're thrust into the limelight.

What isn't often discussed is the cash, the attention, the sacrifice and the isolation. We're quick to praise aspiring Olympians. But are we doing our emerging champs a disservice by expecting them to be commercially successful before they are given a chance to prove themselves?

One young man who is familiar with the highs and lows of professional sport is 19-year-old Jossi Wells, who has become one of the country's most successful young international athletes. Never heard of him? Don't worry; he didn't expect you would have. His sport, freeskiing, has been popular for less than a decade.

It's "a bit like snowboarding on skiis," he says. The riders pull off tricks, flips and manoeuvres while navigating jumps and rails. Wells has been on the snow since he was 18 months old.

"My family wasn't wealthy at all. As kids we always used ex-rental skis and wore ex-rental boots. I didn't have any new gear until I was 8 or 9. I loved skiing so much that my parents made sacrifices, and made sure that I kept going. Some people think of skiing as an upper-class sport, but you can do it on a budget. Now I'm earning, have an agent to deal with the monetary side and the contracts. I don't need to go into bat for myself; I let my agent do all my dirty work."

The extreme sports junkie won silver at the international X Games in 2007, and came second in slope-style racing at the NZ Winter Games in August.

He's a big name in Europe and North America. Wells has signed major sponsorship deals with Nike, Atomic and Oakley, and has appeared in skiing videos and films. A YouTube clip featuring Wells has been viewed almost 200,000 times.

He's a local example of the commercialisation of modern sport, and the culture that comes with it.

"Of course there is money to be made, but it won't last forever," says Wells.

"There's only so much time that I will be able to put my body through this kind of pressure. Some people think my lifestyle is glamorous. In some ways, it is a pretty sweet life. But my body feels like it's 60 years old; I've been beating it up for so long. In freeskiing, the thing that can end your career in an instant is injury. I'm always at the gym trying to keep my body fit and strong. I'm prepared to deal with all that stuff, because it's worth it."

When we speak, Wells has just visited the physio. He's dealing with a serious knee injury. A cursory look at his Twitter page, however, suggests Wells is more concerned with which movie to see with his mates, and when to clean his room.

But when he is in competition mode, he shuts out all distractions. Nils Coberger, coach of the New Zealand ski team and former Olympic competitor, has known Wells for years and says better technology is a bonus for today's young sportspeople.

"When I was competing," says Coberger, "we were away for five months. I spoke to my parents only twice in that time. We never knew where we were going to be. These days, the communication channels are much more effective. We can also use technology to paint the big picture, with diet programmes, performance indicators and video analysis. It's professional sport, and it's a whole new world. But as soon as someone mentions the word 'professional', your youth is taken away from you."

Wells competes overseas for six months a year. He acknowledges that some of his fellow pro skiers indulge in a heady lifestyle, which sometimes includes drugs. Wells doesn't. He wants to show his three younger brothers, who are also competitive skiers, that "you can get results without putting stuff into your body".

The brothers are a tight-knit bunch. They were home-schooled together, and Wells still lives with his family in Wanaka. He says he doesn't feel ostracised from his peers.

"When I come back from my trips, I don't blow my horn about my results, but I do tell my mates about where I have been and what I have been doing. I guess I'm comfortable talking about myself. What's the point in experiencing all this cool stuff if I can't share it with other people? I know that I have grown up a lot faster than other people, but I don't wish it happened differently. I've been to places that many people won't see in a lifetime. I'm only 19. I don't have anything to complain about."

In the past eight years, the number of students representing their schools in minority sports like skiing has risen by 30 per cent, according to the Secondary Schools Sports Council.

But the figures for traditional sports aren't as good: cricket has dropped by 26 per cent, rugby has fallen by five per cent, and netball is down by four per cent.

On the upside, sports associations are offering specialised coaching to promising players as young as 11, who have the potential to reach elite status by their early 20s.

One young woman who picked her talent early on is Joelle King, the second-ranked female squash player in New Zealand.

The 20-year-old has been playing since she was 11, and started to get serious at 15. She has performed at three world junior champs, and was the youngest player to make the national women's squash team, at 17.

Now she's among the top 30 players in the world and has won three Australasian tournaments this year. King, like Wells, has a list of achievements as long as her arm.

She comes across as confident and ambitious, but it hasn't been an easy road for King, who lives in Cambridge. Right now, she doesn't even have a coach, but she isn't short of supporters.

Ata Te Kanawa, the director of a Maori media company, is a family friend and over the years has acted as "a cook, a stylist and a mum" to King. But Te Kanawa credits King's mother, and her extended whanau, for helping the squash player to hone her skills in such a demanding sport.

"Joey's mother, Toots, is a solo mum," says Te Kanawa. "She has worked two jobs, even three jobs at times, to support her girl. They have driven from Hamilton to Invercargill for squash competitions, and slept in the car when they had to. When Joey was competing in Canada, Toots didn't have access to email, so she didn't even know whether her daughter had won or lost until a few days after the matches. But early on, she had made a commitment to support Joey, and that's exactly what she has done."

King is no longer affiliated to Squash New Zealand, because she did not want to move to Auckland to train, and preferred to go it alone, with the support of her family. The downside: she has to manage her own schedule and raise her own funds. King relies on winning tournaments to earn money. Unlike Wells, she has found it difficult to find major sponsors to pay for her expenses and gear. It frustrates her, but King accepts that new athletes in minority sports often have to fly under the radar.

"Even though I'm producing results, it's tough to find support. I have beaten the fourth-ranked player in the world, and there still isn't any sponsorship money coming in. The sponsors don't want to know you until you reach number one. Once that happens, everyone jumps on board. I'm not there yet; that's what drives me. I believe I can be number one in the world. Nothing will get in the way of that. The top players don't intimidate me anymore. I deserve to be here, and I'm able to beat them."

King says there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. It's a line that all young sportspeople must walk, especially those who achieve stellar results early on.

Auckland Grammar student Sam Webster landed in the limelight in August after snagging three gold medals at the junior world track cycling champs in Moscow.

Webster says as a young Kiwi it's not hard to stay grounded. He's happy to get by on next-to-nothing, and he used plenty of number eight wire while in Moscow.

"The other international cyclists were having their gears and wheels changed by their coaches and mechanics," he says, "but our team didn't bring a mechanic. We did everything ourselves. It's part of the Kiwi way. We don't expect that stuff to be done for us. Some of the other competitors got stressed when things weren't going right, but we didn't have those problems, because we were in control. It's reassuring that, if something needs to be fixed on my bike, I can fix it to the best of my ability."

Tim Carswell, the national track cycling coach, knows those challenges well; he won two bronze medals at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, at the age of 26. Carswell says young riders can now build careers as professional athletes who are paid reasonably well. That offers a sense of security, but it doesn't make it any easier to win big races.

According to Carswell, the success of young sportspeople like Sam Webster depends solely on whether they are able to keep up the momentum.

"The main challenge for young athletes is to jump from the junior ranks to the senior ranks. It's a huge leap. They are used to being at the top of the pack, but once they move into professional sport, they're at the bottom. They're faced with the challenge of working their way up again. The first couple of years are the most difficult but if they want to make it to the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics they have no option but to work hard. We guide them through that."

Webster Comes across as thoughtful and well-spoken, along with the other young people interviewed for this story. It's a far cry from the monosyllabic drone and "um, ah" sound bites provided by some far more experienced sportspeople.

The new breed, it seems, are much more articulate. Webster has received glowing media reports. In a single Herald article about his recent wins, the 18-year-old was described as a "cycling sensation" with a "ruthless streak", "raw focus" and "natural power", who may become "a world star" with a "glittering career" if he continues his "rise to the top".

History has shown that the media are sometimes guilty of hyping new athletes too early. There is a fine line between encouraging an athlete and placing unrealistic expectations on them.

"I'm fully aware of those expectations," says Webster, "and I've been reading all the news stories. It's been a bit strange to read about myself in that way. It's true that I don't want to settle for mediocrity, because only the first place-getter has their name engraved on the trophy. But I'm also realistic. I know that, for some seasons, I won't have any top international wins. That will be hard, but I'll need to stay focused on the big picture, and keep my sporting life balanced with other parts of my life."

Staying focused has proved difficult for tennis star Marina Erakovic and golfer Danny Lee, who have been unable to maintain their progress at the elite level. Other young sportspeople have succumbed to different pressures, like 19-year-old swimmer Daniel Bell, who was hospitalised for heavy alcohol intake following the World Championships in Rome in August. It followed a similar incident at last year's Olympics. Stephen Dally, a veteran sports manager, says young athletes will overcome those pressures only if they are desperate enough for success.

"These days, it's all about participation. It's about getting kids off the couch and encouraging them to have a go. That's neat. But at the top level, it's not about participating, it's about winning. Our kids need to be instilled with a desire to win. We pick the talented ones very early on. We give them life coaching, nutritional advice, personal training, public speaking advice and scholarships. But at the end of the day, athletes go nowhere unless they commit to winning. That's what it's about."

Dally is now the head of North Harbour Basketball. His newest discovery is Rob Loe, a 17-year-old Westlake Boys' High student who has made the Tall Blacks squad.

The team made a 12-day whistle-stop tour of Estonia, Italy, Belgium and Finland in August. Speaking to Loe the day after a major Tall Blacks victory in Wellington, he is buzzing from the game, but admits he is trying to focus on his studies, with the aim of securing a scholarship to the United States.

"My mum is talking to some of the American colleges at the moment," says Loe, who looms large at 2.11m.

"It's a challenge to get a place in the good ones, because you don't really get noticed if you live in New Zealand. But I've been trying to balance my academic work with my basketball. It's like having two lives. When I'm travelling, I don't have much time to do schoolwork, and when I come back, it's a big challenge to catch up. I'm trying to focus on my study."

Top Sportspeople may be born to compete but these days they won't go far unless they're educated, eloquent and commercially savvy. Webster and Loe both want to be qualified, in case their sporting careers are cut short.

Olympic-hopeful Wells, however, has no time for study while his career is in motion. King has no back-up plan either: it's squash or nothing. If they don't escape overseas, these young overachievers may be New Zealand's best hope of future sporting success.

"Lots of young people can hit a ball," says King. "The ones who succeed are the ones who can control their frame of mind. It can be pretty lonely in an individual sport like squash. Most of the year, I go from hotel to hotel. I can't count the number of people who say 'Oh, you're so lucky'. The truth is, you don't get handed anything on a plate. But once I'm at the top, I'll look after the people who have looked after me. I will appreciate success more, because it will have been so difficult to reach it."