KEY POINTS:
Barely three months after track and field's most successful Olympics in 44 years, Athletics New Zealand (ANZ) high performance director Kevin Ankrom is already looking to the future.
Valerie Vili's shot put gold and Nick Willis' 1500m bronze at Beijing in August represented the best return from an Olympics for athletics since Tokyo in 1964.
In those games, Peter Snell took an epic 800m/1500m gold double, while John Davies (1500m) and Marise Chamberlain (800m) picked up bronzes.
Ankrom told NZPA it was vital to start looking now at developing the next tier of talent for the 2012 London Olympics - and beyond.
"If you want medals in 2012 and 2016, you can keep putting your money in Nick Willis and Val Vili, that's great, but are they going to produce in 2016?" he said.
"You've got to start developing - not identifying, but developing - the next round of athletes."
The problem didn't lie with a paucity of talent, but in allocating the limited funds available to develop what was there.
"What's lacking is not talent identification, we can identify the talent, it's out there," Ankrom said.
"You can go out to all the secondary school championships and pick out the talent. You can see it, it's very verifiable when someone crosses the line.
"Talent identification is easy - it's how you're going to develop it from stage one through to Olympic level, and how you're going to support it that's important."
Ankrom, who took over from Eric Hollingsworth as ANZ high performance director in April last year, said New Zealand consistently punched above its weight at Olympic level, but had to be careful about how funding was allocated if that success was to continue.
"At the end of the day, we have to look at what we're about - high performance. We're not high development, we're not high grass roots.
"I don't know if it's cherry picking, or letting the cream rise to the top, and then supporting them...there definitely has to be more targeted funding."
Ankrom was hopeful that at the next Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc) funding round, ANZ would be able to point to its Beijing performance as an indication of what was possible.
Sparc has invested $60 million in its high performance programme since the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
Rather than spread that money thinly across all sports, it opted to target those sports "capable of achieving world class results".
More than $51 million was allocated on just nine sports, athletics receiving $3.98 million.
"We can go and say `listen, this is what we're capable of doing, but we can do better if we get more funding on the development side'," Ankrom said.
"Sparc gets a set amount of money from the government, and the government gives them targets they must reach. Sparc gives ANZ a set amount of money and we have targets that much be reached. It has to end up targeted funding."
Ankrom said both Sparc and ANZ would be doing post-Olympic reviews, although neither was expected to be completed until the new year.
ANZ's review would look at what went well, what didn't, and what led to the Beijing successes - and failures.
"We have to look at all the factors - what led up to the Olympics, what our athletes did there and afterwards. We also need to look at what we can do better, what we can improve."
- NZPA
