Kiwis' effort leaves us cold

BY ERIC YOUNG

OPINION: IN DOWNTOWN Vancouver, the ice is being groomed for its bruising hockey finale.

At Cypress Mountain, nature is gradually reclaiming the halfpipe, while high above another valley, empty ski jumps stand sentinel.

Vancouver and its mountain satellites, the hosts of the 21st Winter Olympics, are preparing their farewells.

The Games have been a sometimes stunning, often compelling and briefly tragic congregation of the planet's finest winter athletes and, in little more than 24 hours, they will return to their hibernation.

Some athletes will leave Vancouver or Whistler or Cypress with reputations intact or even enhanced.

Many will have been inspired – or have been an inspiration. Others will have fallen to a fresh generation. All will have left something of themselves on the snow or the ice.

Yet what of the Kiwis and their often too brief, and occasionally invisible, Olympic experience?

With honest confusion you might ask, "what Kiwis?" The most noticeable ones to be found in the Olympic city were those working for Sky and Prime.

For the past 16 days I have been part of a television production which has attempted, as much as possible, to help you like our athletes. Mostly this is because many, if not all, of them may have been unknown to you before the Games. The theory goes that if you know them, you might like them and if you like them you will watch them – and therefore us. This is called television 101.

Yet even the best theories fail through the intrusion of reality.

No New Zealander made a Vancouver final. Only a couple progressed from their heats. One, speed skater Blake Skjellerup, managed that only because others fell. Another Kiwi, downhill skier Ben Griffin, competed in two events and failed to complete a solitary run in either.

Yet another, Mitchey Greig, froze in the gates of her ski cross heat.

I have no philosophical problem that our Winter Olympians seem to be held to a lesser standard than their summer cousins. This seems only fair and reasonable as we build an international presence.

But at some point you have to set aside the emotion, remember that they ARE athletes, that this IS an Olympics, that WE do care and that a silver fern has always represented equal parts honour and expectation.

Put it this way: When Valerie Vili competes in London in a couple of years, what will your expectations be? What were they 18 months go in Beijing? I suspect they may end up being the same. Gold medal. Nothing less would, or will, do. Generally it's unfair to place that burden on the shoulders of our elite athletes, but have you SEEN Val's shoulders lately?

One of the problems many of us found in trying to appreciate our winter athletes, is that we were never sure what our expectations should be.

Here, to me, is the core of the problem. The other day I heard our Super G skier Tim Cafe say he was "stoked" with 38th place.

I am told Tim is a decent person, but what he perhaps does not fully appreciate, is that those who helped fund his Olympics excursion – you and I – may not share fully in that excitement.

We may be impressed by his selection and thrilled for his experience. But not many will appreciate his joy at coming nowhere.

One who certainly does not, is summer Olympics great Ian Ferguson, who was scathing in his assessment of the winter team: "I don't think you should be going to the Olympics if you don't really intend to be the best in the world." he said. "It is not a game. You have to deserve it."

Ferguson is, by almost any measure, our greatest Olympian so yes, he has earned his opinion. I just wonder whether he was the right person to have shared it.

As a coach of Olympic athletes in competition for the same Sparc funding as the winter team, Ferguson is conflicted. His point is faultless; just not faultlessly made and the problem goes beyond a simple battle for limited resources.

Many millions of Sparc dollars are now contestable; handed to the sports and the athletes who can present the best business case and do it with the promise of the greatest return.

Ferguson knows this. In the last round of contestable funding, no sport came out better than his.

Flat water kayaking, a sport he once dominated, received $800,000 from Sparc – $100,000 more than the entire icy breadth of Winter Olympics sports.

Yet since Ferguson retired, after the 1988 Seoul Games, our entire Olympic kayaking return has been a solitary Ben Fouhy silver medal.

So while I share some of his misgivings about the number and the attitude of our winter athletes, it might have been more appropriate coming from someone without such a vested interest in their failure.

eric.young@star-times.co.nz

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