Halberg Awards driving me crazy

But he only drove a car, someone chirped at me the other day as I continued to shake my head over Scott Dixon not winning the overall Halberg Award.

Yeah, that's right. Valerie Vili only threw a metal ball, Sir Edmund Hillary only climbed a hill and Peter Snell merely ran around in circles for a few minutes.

You can make any sport sound like nonsense if you try hard enough. From the sounds of it, far too many of us have been.

How Dixon, who won the Sportsman of the Year title, was overlooked for the ultimate prize at the Halberg Awards ceremony the other night will take some explaining. To win not only the IndyCar series but also the world famous Indianapolis 500 in the same year was unique enough for Kiwi sport. To equal the record for the number of wins during the championship, ensuring his name will be remembered alongside legends such as Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Al Unser Jr, was nothing short of remarkable.

The only New Zealand sporting achievement to rate as highly in recent years has been golfer Michael Campbell's shock win in the 2005 US Open. And that was merely an isolated success story. As well as winning the prestigious Indy 500, Dixon also set the pace throughout the 2008 series, in the process boosting his career wins to 16, second only behind Sam Hornish Jr. He is arguably the biggest thing on four wheels in the US; indeed one of the biggest names in world motorsport.

Maybe our Halberg judges considered IndyCar racing a specifically American pastime and therefore less relevant to outsiders. If so, they were guilty of a serious misconception. The second and third placegetters in the 2008 IndyCar Series (won by a Kiwi) were both Brazilian, and a high proportion of the drivers came from outside the United States. The event is as international as cycling's Tour de France and, at the moment, Dixon is its Lance Armstrong.

That the judging panel couldn't see things in that light raises questions over issues such as prejudice and favouritism and, in particular, an apparent bias towards Olympic achievement. Some judges have openly conceded that more weight was given to the performances of our Olympic athletes. In other words they were effectively endorsing a hierarchy of sport. I guess that at least explains how the rugby league world cup-winning Kiwis missed out on the Team of the Year award.

Where has this superiority complex come from? It was hard to not agree with New Zealand Herald sportswriter Steve Deane last week, when he suggested the results were dictated by a judging panel seriously skewed in terms of its ethnic and socio-economic status. To these folk, league and motorsport clearly took a backseat to Olympic endeavour. That 1500m runner Nick Willis was shortlisted for the finals despite not even winning at Beijing only demonstrated the depth of their myopia.

If the Halberg Awards are to avoid such farce in the future; if they're to regain even a measure of respect on the New Zealand sporting landscape, the event organisers need to find a panel that will represent a more egalitarian point of view, and better reflect national opinion. To include Willis as a finalist but not world champion lawn bowler Gary Lawson was bad enough. To rate the Evers-Swindell twins' rowing success ahead of the Kiwis' world cup glory was simply staggering.

For all that, the decision to bypass Dixon for the supreme award was the worst of the three howlers. With all due respect to Vili, an Olympic gold in the women's shot-put can never trump victory in one of most iconic events in world sport; at least, not unless there's some serious handicapping taking place. And from what we've heard before and after the awards, that was exactly what was happening.

"In an Olympic year the Olympic Games are the only show in town," one judge explained.

If that's the case, it makes you wonder why we even go to the trouble of staging the Halberg Awards in an Olympic year. Why bother? If it's preordained that a win in the Dakar rally or the surfing world championships cannot be compared with a gold medal stamped with the five rings, the most sensible move would be to separate the awards and let the pro-Olympics lobby go it alone. At least then we'd be spared this preening, snobbishness that seems to go hand-in-hand with the event.

There is one other point about this that I hardly dare to raise, but will stick my neck out regardless: at least Dixon triumphed in a truly open event against all-comers, beating drivers of all ages, creeds, religion; left-handers, right-handers, men and women, including 2008 female rivals Danica Patrick and Sarah Fisher. In contrast, Vili's wins were achieved solely against rivals of her own gender. Dixon was the best in his particular sport; Vili the best in her category.

Of course, none of this is the fault of the athletes and there is no intent to question or diminish the quality of their performances. All (or at least most) are champions in their own right, beyond any discussion or speculation. Whatever success they've managed to achieve over the past year has been tangible, and measured against their peers. In contrast, the Halberg Awards are all about smoke and mirrors. The only redeeming feature is that any money raised goes to charity.

- © Fairfax NZ News