Paul Lewis: Vili well worth the price to stay

Valerie Vili has denied that she has ever thought about switching countries but the recent hubbub shows what a dangerous game playing nations off against each other can be.

Vili said she was misquoted in a UK magazine article about possibly competing for Britain instead of New Zealand and maybe she was. However, she has used similar tactics before.

A few months ago, when she won the Halberg Awards, Vili also used the occasion to make a point, about which this column wrote: "She showed a touch of the politician, using the aftermath of the awards to hint strongly that she didn't always feel valued; that she needed to be paid more if she was to avoid the temptation of living in France or England, where she can earn a great deal more than she does here.

"This can sound grasping if it is not done well but Vili managed it and has a point - twice sportsperson of the year and our only current Commonwealth, Olympic and world champion and an indoor world champion to boot, yet she earns nowhere near what our top rugby players and cricketers do.

So she kicked for touch when the quote from Sir Murray Halberg was wheeled out that she would become the most successful track and field athlete New Zealand had ever produced."

So the likelihood is that Vili said something similar in the UK and that perhaps the journalist involved read more into it than was actually there.

It is not unknown for sportspeople to try a bit of spin with money in the offing. Look, for example, at all the "I think I'll try rugby union" stories that pile out of the NRL when players are coming off contract and agents want to force the price up.

Vili's problem is rather different. She is indisputably our top international sportsperson but is in what can be described as a fringe sport. Shot putters aren't glam nor do they have mass appeal. Dan Carter, she ain't. We don't see Val Vili in nightly TV commercials nor a great many other endorsement deals.

In fact, Paige Hareb, she ain't. The blonde, blue-eyed, good-looking surfer girl recently picked up a good endorsement and we may well feel such distinctions are not fair when you are a physically imposing shot putter in today's nakedly commercial world.

So Vili is more dependent on funding from the nation she represents. She gets about $40,000 a year in direct high performance payouts from Sparc.

She also gets sports science and sports medicine help and full costs for training and competing in Olympic, Commonwealth and world championships, which amounts to a total figure of about $200,000 - although it is only the $40,000 part that actually finds its way into her bank account.

She'd could receive much more in Britain in sports funding and could - potentially, anyway - earn a heap more from endorsements as a rather more exotic figure in those parts.

It seems clear that Vili is using her eligibility (through parental and marriage links) to compete for another nation to help force Sparc's wallet open a little wider.

There is a good likelihood that she will succeed and also that Vili, as a growing figure in New Zealand sport, could turn out to be a bit of an advocate for elite athletes affected by similar circumstances.

Her financial future will be clearer at the end of this month, after the budget and when it is seen how Sports Minister Murray McCully structures Sparc's payments to elite athletes.

However hints of leaving can be a dangerous game. There is always an element of biting the hand that feeds you. There is also the question of alienating your public base.

Vili's heroics at Beijing and her much-improved public persona have helped her a great deal. Still, no one likes to keep hearing consistently that she could leave - even if it is just a negotiating ploy - and you get the feeling this is one arrow she should leave in the quiver for the time being.

NO MATTER where Vili ends up, it will not be in the highly uncomfortable position in which Olympic 1500m champion Rashid Ramzi finds himself.

Ramzi is now under a drugs cloud, having tested positive for CERA, the slow-release version of EPO which gives the blood more oxygen and boosts performance. If his B sample is also found to be positive, Ramzi's gold medal will be gone and bronze medallist Nick Willis will move up to silver after the Kiwi's evocative run in Beijing.

Ramzi was an athlete of convenience, arriving in Bahrain - for whom he was their first Olympic success - because he couldn't get into his native Moroccan track and field team.

There's something not quite right about athletes who hurdle national boundaries, like those Kenyans who run for Scandinavian countries. There's always the underlying feeling that they aren't doing it for pride or parochialism - but for fame and money.

Ramzi was hugely feted and rewarded when he returned from Beijing with his gold medal. You wonder now what Bahrain will do with him. When he won, he made that ecstatic gesture, falling to his knees and thanking God. Now we can all wonder if thanks also needed to be given to CERA.

That's the other thing about Ramzi. He sullied one of the Olympics' blue riband events - now the suspicions that surrounded him but could never be said publicly are beginning to be aired.

Once he moved to Bahrain, his personal bests were reduced by suspiciously wide margins. Further suspicion accrued when Ramzi kept long periods between track appearances. "New-found ability in your mid-20s has the odour of a North Shields fish quay on a warm day," wrote former 1500m world champion and recordholder Steve Cram in a recent blog.

The difference between Ramzi (gold medal, athlete of convenience, potential drugs cheat, hugely rewarded) and Vili (gold medal, proud Kiwi, drugs-free and struggling to make ends meet) could not be more marked.

She should stay and we should pay.