David Leggat: Weightlifter tipped to start Oz goldrush

A pint-sized weightlifter is the big tip to plop the first gold in Australia's oversized Commonwealth Games medal bag on Thursday.

And all Australia expects Erika Yamasaki in the 48kg event on the opening day of competition will merely be the first of many.

Four years ago, diver Irina Lashko gained fleeting fame for opening Australia's account in Manchester on the 1m diving board. If Yamasaki emulates Lashko, the perky 18-year-old Darwin-born lifter, who stands 1.49m, will soon become a footnote as the goldrush sets in over the 11 days of competition.

Australia have made topping the Games medal table as predictable as night following day. In Manchester, they collected 206 medals, and there were 198 at Kuala Lumpur four years earlier. This time they're targeting 208.

It's a dead-set certainty that they'll beat their closest rivals, England and Canada, by a mile this time too.

New Zealand's medal ambitions are less lofty, but there are expectations, and hard looks will be exchanged among the country's sporting bankers if targets aren't met.

At Manchester, New Zealand collected 45 medals - 11 gold, 13 silver and 21 bronze. That was a best return from any Commonwealth Games outside New Zealand.

Kuala Lumpur produced eight golds in a total of 34; Victoria, Canada was a lean five golds out of 42 in 1994 while Auckland in 1990 turned in a bumper harvest of 17 golds out of a total 58 medals.

New Zealand team officials shy away from being specific on medal expectations. Instead, they talk in broad terms about providing the right environment for athletes to succeed.

Chef de mission Dave Currie happily admits he's loathe to talk numbers. "The danger in any competition, particularly here, is to celebrate before you've done the business."

The Aussies are different. Just as chips go with fish, it's a given that Australian Games bosses will talk up their chances, and the bigger the better.

Nick Hill, chief executive of Government funding agency Sparc, is similarly forthright in what he hopes to see from New Zealand's athletes.

Allowing for the fact the weightlifting medal distribution has changed - no more split of clean and jerk, and snatch, just overall medals - he's got numbers in mind.

"We've always said 40 is comparable with Manchester [with the weightlifting adjustment]," Hill said. "That's our benchmark and we want to develop that kind of consistency.

"It's not out of the question we could end up with 46 or 47 and that would be outstanding."

If New Zealand reach 50, Hill will be the bloke doing cartwheels outside Sports Minister Trevor Mallard's door when he gets home.

Equally, "if we get below 40, people would be entitled to ask some pretty serious questions".

Such as, why has Sparc devoted serious money to a sport which fails to deliver. In any business model, a return on investment is expected.

With the Beijing Olympics coming up in 2008, sports that don't stand up in the next fortnight will have a hard job convincing Sparc they deserve to keep backing at the same level.

So there is plenty at stake, although Hill added it was too simplistic to say failure to produce the anticipated medals would automatically cost a sport money. But it would guarantee a tough look at a sport's high-performance operation.

Sparc's pre-Games projections had shooting as potentially New Zealand's biggest medal winner in Melbourne, with 12, followed by cycling with six, swimming and athletics five apiece.

It has at least one medal pencilled in as being an attainable goal for 15 of the 17 sports, the exceptions being gymnastics and table tennis.

CHANCES FOR EARLY MEDALS

Swimmers Helen Norfolk and Moss Burmester and the 4000m individual pursuit cyclists loom as New Zealand's best hopes for a first medal in Melbourne on Thursday night.

Norfolk is in the 200m individual medley, Burmester in the 200m butterfly and the cycling final is later on Thursday night.

Both swimmers are decent chances and the pedallers, headed by Hayden Roulston, are rated a good shot.