KEY POINTS:
Team sports and some minor sports have been put on notice by the New Zealand Olympic Committee secretary-general.
Barry Maister yesterday declared the Beijing Olympics a success in terms of its organisation and the performance of the New Zealand team, though he did have some reservations.
"You'd have
to say the performance of our team sports has been disappointing," the former national hockey rep said.
New Zealand had a men's and women's hockey team in Beijing, men's and women's football teams and a women's basketball team. Their combined athletes totalled 80, more than half the Olympic team and none managed to progress out of pool play.
The men's hockey team came closest, but a draw and a loss in their final two matches saw them slip from second to fourth place in their pool.
"The men should have qualified for the semifinals," Maister said. "They were the best-prepared hockey team to leave the country and had enough talent, but the draw against China cost them."
The women's campaign was an unmitigated disaster that will lead to some serious hand-wringing at Hockey New Zealand.
The men's and women's football teams faded after promising starts and there was a gulf in class between the Tall Ferns and the serious contenders in Beijing.
The NZOC will undertake a review of all sports following the Games and will meet with Sparc, the Government sports funding agency, to determine the best strategy looking ahead to London. Maister said the NZOC traditionally went with a broad, inclusive view to sports but said they might need to reconsider the place of some minor sports.
"What we've learned about sports like badminton, synchronised swimming, weightlifting and shooting is that it is not good enough just to reach a qualifying standard," Maister said. "You need a sustained international programme over three to four years. It's very hard to come together at an Olympics every four years and expect to compete.
"Maybe you don't come to the Olympic Games if you don't have a sustained international programme."
The catch-22 here is that those sports are not targeted by Sparc and have to compete for funding from a relatively small pot, rendering them unable to develop international programmes.
Adding to the concerns of the minor sports will be the fact that London will be, in many ways, prohibitively expensive. A smaller team with a narrower focus will likely be just as successful, yet significantly cheaper.
Those quibbles aside, Maister said that, from an NZOC perspective, these Olympics had been a success. They looked at three criteria in determining this: whether they have created an effective high-performance environment; results; and local conditions.
"We'll hand out an athlete's survey but my indications are the team has been a happy one and well led," Maister said.
"Our results have been good. We've got medals across five sports, which is important. We don't want to just say we had a great rowing campaign but nothing else.
"The organisation, the transport and those things have been excellent. And the facilities, I've never seen better."
Maister said the one negative to the Beijing experience was the ongoing saga with ticketing.
Many parents found it difficult to access tickets and were told they were sold out when there were still thousands available.
About 35 more ticketing agencies than in the past applied for packages meaning fewer were available for the individual punter. Many of these tickets that went to agencies remained unsold, although the official word was the events were sold out because they were no longer in BOCOG hands.
There were hundreds of empty seats at most venues, though overall attendance was significantly up on Athens.
"We had about 2000-3000 supporters out here but we could have doubled that, I think," Maister said. "It's something the IOC has to sort out. It's an IOC problem."
