Olympic bosses target 14 or more medals in Rio

The New Zealand Olympic team came home with 13 medals from London, equal with the best medal haul ever, but Olympic bosses have already targeted more in 2016 and 2020. Photo / Getty Images.

The New Zealand Olympic team came home with 13 medals from London, equal with the best medal haul ever, but Olympic bosses have already targeted more in 2016 and 2020.

High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) today released their strategy through to 2020, which they hope will get even more New Zealanders winning on the world stage.

They have targeted 14 or more medals in Rio in 2016 and 16 or more medals at the 2020 Olympic Games. They also have a stated goal of one or more medals from the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, two or more in 2018, 8-12 gold medals at the 2016 Paralympic Games and two or more gold medals at the 2014 Winter Paralympics.

"New Zealand's high performance sport system has been evolving for many years," HPSNZ chief executive Alex Baumann said. "Recent changes have included the Government's significant boost in funding announced in 2010 and the formation of HPSNZ in 2011, along with greater targeting of resources.

"All the work in the years building up to London came to fruition when New Zealand won 13 medals at the Olympic Games and 17 at the Paralympic Games. These were outstanding results that the nation was rightly proud of. But we need to refine how we operate if we are to continue building on this success, and this strategy represents the next step in the evolution of the high performance system.

"HPSNZ's 2013-2020 strategy describes our vision, sets new targets for the next two Olympic cycles, and outlines our long term aspiration for New Zealand to be recognised as having one of the world's leading high performance systems."

Sports will present their high performance plans to HPSNZ for consideration in November. The next investment decisions will be announced in December.