Over and over again I have made the point that the dysfunction of New Zealand sport is the result of Sport New Zealand policies initiated by Peter Miskimmin and carried on by Raelene Castle. And this week we have another example.

Just to be clear it is not the sports that have a problem. It is policies prepared by bureaucrats in Wellington. They do not work. They cause damage. They kill people. Centralised training for example. If East Germany and Soviet Russia could not make that policy work why on earth did Miskimmin think that his Level 1 office in the Harbour City Centre would be any different. And why does Raelene Castle hang on to the same expensive failure from the same expensive office. They say intelligence is the ability to learn. Wow, with this lot you have to wonder.

But back to this week’s news.

In December 2014 Simon Plumb reported the following on Stuff News.

 Dysfunction deepens at Swimming New Zealand, with half the high-performance coaching staff set to be axed in yet another overhaul of the Crown’s beleaguered Olympic investment. Gary Hurring and Kelly Bentley, who run the Wellington high-performance system, are the other two coaches affected.

And that was it. A few weeks later Gary Hurring was gone. The coaching hub system had been dismantled and swimming was in a far worse position than when Miskimmin first put his greasy mits on a successful sport. The loss of Gary Hurring was especially harsh. He is a superb coach and was cast adrift in the most heartless manner imaginable. I wonder how many swimming champions were lost when Swimming New Zealand rode roughshod over Hurring’s career.   

However, not content with the destruction of swimming, Sport New Zealand decided it would do the same thing to cycling. This time though they not only destroyed the sport, they killed one of its best competitors.

Here is what Zoe George reported in Stuff in December 2021

The upheaval at Cycling New Zealand continues, as the organisation closes four major development performance hubs, putting the future of upcoming cyclists in doubt.

Performance hub staff were told of the decision to close the doors last week. The hubs in Invercargill, Christchurch, Cambridge and Auckland are the ones to close. 

The Southern Hub, based at the SIT Velodrome, produced more than 15 national champions lead coach Sid Cumming. Cumming said the hub has been successful in developing talent and is “very disappointed” by the closures. “I thought we were doing a good job and all the reports say we were doing a good job,” he said.

So, there we have it. Two different sports. Two different journalists. Seven years apart almost to the day. The same story almost word for word. Now tell me Sport New Zealand knows what it is doing. Their policy “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.” Their problem is this time their nothing killed a fine New Zealander.

It is acutely relevant to ask, whose turn will it be in 2027; rowing or snow sports or athletics – who knows? What 14-year-old, still in high school, is being groomed by Sport New Zealand to die in an effort to satisfy their policy demands, to justify their obscene money, to meet their always impossible and always selfish goals.

Some of us listened in horror to the German Court cases that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But are we all that different? Was Peter Miskimmin’s policy any better? Does Raelene Castle know what her organisation is doing? Do they care?

Here, for example is a story of an East German shot-put champion, Heidi Krieger. All I have done is change the location to New Zealand, change her name to Olive and the drugs supplied by East Germany to Sport New Zealand’s money.  

Olive is eleven when she discovers a fun pastime: athletics. Things like that don’t go unnoticed in New Zealand. A selection and training system refined to perfection monitors school children to determine who’s good at what sport. Shot-put and discus throw are the two little Olive might be famous for one day.

Olive knows the deal: being successful in sports equals being successful in life. And so, she practices and practices until at fourteen she’s admitted to the athletics centralised program for talented children, managed by the of powerful sports club in Auckland, which is funded by Sport New Zealand. Olive practices weightlifting, discus throw, and shot-put every day. It’s tough, but her coach provides money that means she can rent an apartment, buy food and a car and go out with her friends once a week. Follow Sport New Zealand’s rules and she will even receive a $20,000 Christmas bonus. Her life is bought and paid for by the state. Harder and harder they push. Their demands that she must save Athletics New Zealand are overwhelming

At 21, Olive wins the gold medal for shot-put at the Paris Olympic Games. She throws the shot 22.01 meters. Olive is a success. But Olive will soon be gone. After years of depression, uncertainty, and suicidal tendencies, she has decided to end it all.

Well done Sport New Zealand. Well done Raelene Castle.