McCully's new sports structure

Murray McCully. Photo / Supplied

With the Government strapped for money, public-private partnerships are more likely

A fundamental strategic shift in the area of high-performance sport is expected in a post-Budget announcement this month.

The changes, driven by Minister of Sport and Recreation Murray McCully, will include increased investment in infrastructure, and additional money to develop the systems and processes surrounding athlete management.

But at a time when it is not fashionable to ask the Minister of Finance for more money, McCully hinted that public-private partnerships would be crucial.

The new strategy entails a philosophical shift to working the system around the athlete, rather than trying to fit the athlete into the system.

At the elite level, this already happens, with the likes of Olympic medallists Nick Willis, Valerie Vili and Tom Ashley all leading their own programmes, and getting support from Sparc and the New Zealand Academy of Sport when they need it.

It would mean the creation of a "one-stop shop" high-performance network giving the athletes access to world-class programme planning, coaching, sports medicine and science and technology with the aim of turbo-charging the high-performance programmes of national sporting organisations (NSOs).

But already there are murmurings of discontent from some NSOs, which believe Sparc is marching in and trying to take over.

Sports such as rowing and cycling already have highly developed and well-led programmes in place, so quite how this new athlete-led approach will fit with those NSOs remains to be seen.

To achieve these objectives would also mean significant investment in infrastructure. There will need to be some enhancement of existing high-performance facilities such as Auckland's Millennium Institute, QEII in Christchurch and the high-performance rowing centre at Karapiro, as well as potential new facilities.

McCully said that in the present economic climate there simply was not the money in the Government's coffers to pay for it all, and hinted that some of the investment must come from the private sector.

"We are pursuing these objectives at worst possible time from a financial point of view," McCully said last month.

"We're now turning our minds to where to find the money," he said last month. "It means talking to partners and trying to draw more blood from stones in Parliament.

"We may not have all the cash from the outset, we may need to find some more later on. But we need to get thinking straight on this right now."

The new system would be likely to capture 30 to 50 pinnacle athletes (those in the top eight in the world in their sports).

But McCully also stressed the need for better alignment, co-ordination and partnerships in the country's high-performance structures. So the new system is expected to also enhance the process for the next tier down to encourage them into the high-performance end.

"We want to preserve continuity," he said.