Bevan Rapson writes that modern administrators need a bit more 'She'll be right' and less panic about the readiness of New Delhi to host the Commonwealth Games.
Give Greg Yelavich a medal.
Amid this week's near-hysteria about Delhi's readiness to host the Commonwealth Games, the Stanmore Bay pistol shooter told a radio interviewer that he was ready to sleep in a half-finished room and walk 10 floors for a shower if he had to.
His breezy confidence
in the ability of New Zealand sportspeople to cope with a bit of inconvenience made a stark change from the patronising tut-tutting and outright alarmism dominating the bulletins.
Poor old Delhi took a caning over the readiness of Games facilities, alleged security risks and an apparent outbreak of mosquito-borne illness.
And, yes, a handful of athletes decided the event wasn't for them after all. They're entitled to make that choice.
But a bunch of officials - including some in New Zealand - seemed to needlessly ramp up the sense of crisis.
In the old days of amateur sports officials, I'm sure many of them would have taken the Yelavich approach. We've got an event we're excited about attending and whatever difficulties might arise, we'll deal with them. Back then, our unofficial national motto was "She'll be right".
Modern administrators, thoroughly media-trained and with high-status roles to live up to, can't ever be so blasé. Hence the solemn faces, emergency missions, the statements-of-the-bleeding-obvious about athlete welfare and reinforcement of the idea that the Games could be called off.
Sadly, our people seem to be world leaders at this stuff: chef de mission Dave Currie's pronouncements over problems with facilities made headlines in Britain.
The admonishing tone continued when our team delayed its departure because of what New Zealand Olympic Committee president Mike Stanley called the "tremendously disappointing" state of the athletes' village. Hope someone gave the poor guy a hug.
We probably shouldn't be surprised that managerial types get spooked by India. To Western eyes, its teeming multitudes and chaotic scenes seem a challenge to the very idea of management itself.
But having accepted an invitation to the party, we could at least give the impression we plan to enjoy ourselves and expect any problems to be ironed out eventually.
Very few major sporting events happen without concerns about readiness so did anyone really expect Delhi to be the exception?
And when reporters got wound up with stories about a collapsed footbridge and fallen ceiling tiles, I hope ears were burning among those experts who signed off on a certain stadium roof in Southland and various building sites in Christchurch.
Terrorism fears were fanned when a reporter smuggled some bomb gear into the main stadium but this was before security lockdown. And you might recall a local reporter pulling a similar kind of stunt right here for a story about security at rugby venues. Good for a headline but hardly cause for panic.
Given India's geopolitical neighbourhood, we should actually credit the Indians with knowing a bit about security. Their experts guard against attacks on all sorts of events, including cricket matches attended by huge crowds.
A risk remains, as always, but we lose too much if we allow it to threaten events like the Commonwealth Games.
Maybe I'm a bit of a softie about the Games. Blame that on me being at an impressionable age in Christchurch in 1974.
Dick Tayler's 10,000m heroics in the late afternoon sun. Filbert Bayi scorching to a new world record in the 1500m, pushed hard by our own John Walker. Tracksuit-clad athletes all over town: corn-fed Canadians, Africans with the blackest skin we'd ever seen and Scotsmen with the whitest. We even cheered Australian sprinter Raelene Boyle.
Combining intense athletic competition with a spirit of international goodwill, the 1974 Games - just two years after the horrors at Munich, remember - showed just how great such events could still be.
These days, it's fashionable to say the Games have lost their lustre. They struggle to compete for attention against a packed schedule of televised professional sport, events tweaked like junk food to get a fan's mouth watering and maximise the bucks.
But the Commonwealth Games will still generate their own magic, partly because the Commonwealth itself is so unique: a group of nations who, despite all the post-colonial recriminations, still want to nurture their historical links.
For geographically isolated New Zealand, the organisation is a godsend, connecting us with wildly different countries all over the world and, importantly, not just for trade purposes.
Maybe we won't get any world records at the Delhi Games. And, no, the organisational challenges won't go away. But that won't faze Greg Yelavich or the other athletes who can't wait to get to India and get on with it.
And the dengue fever-spreading mosquitoes? Yelavich didn't sound like a man lying awake at night fretting about that. Perhaps he trusts our worrywart officials to have cleverly identified a strategic and technological solution. It's called insect repellent.
