The reason I mentioned Top 50, 100, was that during the Cameron era these benchmarks, in addition to FINA points, were often used to determine things like carding, Prime Minister’s Scholarships etc for our swimmers. Probably still is, but there was always scant information available and the policies were never applied consistently or equitably. Even if our swimmers were nowhere near the standard required, just trying to understand the “pathways” as Cameron used to refer to, was a complete mystery. You know, the old adage, “knowledge is power”.

But the thing that just sticks in the throat is that the clubs were constantly told that the SPARC funding for High Performance sport was ONLY to be used for the handful of elite swimmers and was NOT for emerging talent or promising young swimmers, or any other SNZ purpose. This apparently was the SPARC criteria for narrowly targeted funding for medal prospects at the Olympics. I even recall a radio interview with Cameron on the Deaker show when asked about the SPARC funding and how much would be used on promising new talent, and the answer was NONE, that it was only for the handful of top swimmers, and that this was a specific SPARC condition of HP funding.

What we have instead is a clear case of money being siphoned away into the SNZ big black hole of its overheads, a doubling of the numbers in the HP with most swimmers who frankly should not even be there, and promises about how they are going to light the world on fire in 2016.

And then swimmers like Natalie Wiegersma who STILL gets bugger all funding. Or Cara Baker, does she get funding? Hell no. Or any ranked swimmer that has left the HP Centre, do they get funding? Don’t be stupid. Oh, but hordes of promising Wellington swimmers who frankly don’t have a hope in hell of making an Aquablack team any time soon are getting funded.

In a nutshell, why is there a new HP Centre in Wellington?

The answer is Mark Berge who was the Chairman of Capital SC … plus … the Chairman of Swimming Wellington .. plus … a Board Member of SNZ … plus … now the Chair of the High Performance Review Committee. Add to that shocking collection of conflicts of interests the usual stooges Byrne, Butler, Cull and McDonald, and the result is:

Two fingers to the review!!

I want to add to @Tom (“looking forward”) and @Chris (“grow the business”) my sheer and visceral distaste for the use of the term ‘High Performance” to justify spending money in support of ahtletes whose claim to achievement ranks no better than moderate to mediocre and by world standards probably poor.

I will not become personal in naming individual athletes (because it is not their fault that SNZ administrators are completely inept when it comes to protecting the public purse) but I fail to see how any athlete who is ranking lower than 50 in the world can be defined as being High Performance and is worthy of tax payer support. By that definition there is only one athlete in Wellington who currently deserves recognition (and support) under a High Performance moniker. There are also considerable numbers in Auckland who receive tax-payer support who should not and then there are a handful of others around the country and overseas who receive nothing in support who should.

I am over these people – I do not begrudge my tax dollars being spent on athletes who have genuinely achieved something (Olympic or World Championship qualification maybe a good level to start) but I am absolutely opposed to tax payer dollars being spent on athletes below that level, no matter how promising someone may think they are.

Is that not completely inappropriate to be making major financial commitments, no doubt having entered into long term contracts, when the very question of SNZ’s structure including high performance is likely to be part of the review? Were there no boundaries placed on Butler, Byrne and this Board? Is this not a case bordering on malfeasance? Is this not another case of shocking governance?

And where the hell is this Coalition calling them to account?

And I guess I should also ask the other obvious questions. Given that there is only one elite high performance swimmer that I can think of in Wellington who I would say justifies SPARC support, has Capital SC had a sudden influx of swimmers ranked in the World Top 50, or even Top 100, or even 150, or lets be generous, Top 200? These of course were the figures that would be bandied about to justify the supposed select few in Auckland.

So SNZ has just handed Capital SC an annual cheque, for what I would estimate, at least $150,000 per annum, probably more, as their coaches salary, expenses, and their pool hire is now being paid for by us.

I reckon that since they are feeling so generous with money that doesn’t belong to them, and since SPARC are as compliant in this sham as anyone, every coach with swimmers ranked higher than the swimmers in the Wellington HP Centre (excluding Gareth Kean of course) should put their bill in for their salary and pool hire to be paid for by SNZ.

I think that’s fair, don’t you David?

All regions already have a process of ratifying events in their region which is normally done through their Technical Committees. Their job is to oversee the ratification process to ensure that any events on the calendar in their region meet with the technical requirements i.e. required number of Referees, officials etc. before it is approved, and before results can be submitted to Take Your Marks. There is a Technical Certificate that a Meet Referee must sign off after every session, which is then approved and ratified by a region’s board. And if a Technical Certificate with all the necessary paperwork is not produced, the meet will not be ratified. Simple.

So for example, if my local club decides to run a club meet and doesn’t have the required number of qualified officials, or qualified Referees, or doesn’t comply with the rules in any way, it can’t have its results ratified by the region. Fair enough.

What I think this is David, is EITHER:

1. We (SNZ) don’t believe anything that doesn’t come out of Wellington is of an appropriate standard, because of course everything that we (SNZ) do is of such a superior standard and quality, we wish to ensure quality control is vested in Pelorus House, where of course we believe regions have no function and are a waste of space and we’ve been wanting to get rid of them anyway. And by the way, if we don’t like you, we won’t ratify your meet!

OR

2. We (SNZ) think that this is a great way of moving even more control to our 32 staff because they need to justify their jobs, and besides, this can be a tidy little money-spinner, because, think about it, if we take control of all swim meets throughout the entire country we can then charge a “ratification fee” for our new service (which up until now has been free, but that’s just a red herring).

OR A COMBINATION OF BOTH.

(BTW glad to see you back on the airwaves David).