John MacDonald: Is winning-at-all-cost really worth it?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Is the long-term damage that can be caused by a win-at-all-cost approach to sport really worth it?
This is the question that a lot of us will be asking today with the release of the findings from a review into high-performance sports by Cycling New Zealand.
It’s the review that came about after cyclist Olivia Podmore – whose parents both live here in Christchurch – died last August in a suspected suicide.
Olivia was a very talented athlete. She represented New Zealand at the Rio Olympics but was gutted when she wasn’t selected to compete at the Tokyo games.
And even before the release of the Cycling New Zealand report, it became apparent that she’d been caught up in all sorts of internal politics within the sport – which happens so often, doesn’t it?
Someone takes on a sport, loves it, realises they’re pretty good at it, others realise they’re pretty good at it, but then things go pear-shaped – and not always because of what happens on the race track, or in the pool, on the field or on the running track. Internal politics can ruin so many things.
I remember when Olivia died last year that I didn’t really want to talk about it on the show, for a couple of reasons.
The first reason was that I just wanted to do my bit towards respecting her family's privacy at such a traumatic time.
The second reason was that I only realised after Olivia died that I’d met her father before and that he was someone who’d really made an impression on me.
Our family’s had an involvement with rowing. Our twin boys took up the sport quite late in the piece – becoming novice rowers just last year, when they were in Year 12, rowing for Cashmere High School.
They had a pretty successful first year in the sport. And I remember one day, in particular, when they powered their way to winning a gold medal at the South Island champs. They’re twins and they row together in the double.
And I remember how we were all over the moon but there was one parent there, in particular, who just seemed to really understand how we were feeling, seeing our kids go across the finish line first.
This guy was the partner of one of the Cashmere parents, whose daughter was involved in the rowing programme.
It’s quite hard to explain, but I remember getting the sense at the time that this guy really understood why we were so excited and so proud of the boys.
And that’s why I suppose I was a bit embarrassed when I eventually discovered who he was and what a sporting star his daughter had been. And that I only realised this after she had died.
But it also clicked with me as to why he was so in tune with how we were feeling that day when the boys won gold on Lake Ruataniwha, in Twizel. It was because he’d seen his daughter win time and time again. He’d seen her compete at the Olympics. And he knew what went into getting to that point.
And it’s the path athletes take to ‘getting to that point’ – getting to compete at the highest level – that’s what the focus is on now in light of Olivia Podmore’s death
Her mum Nienke told the NZ Herald over the weekend that the priority given to performance and winning medals over everything else made her sad.
"I'm just really sad, because Liv is the cost of this."
And who wouldn’t be.
I can think back, and it wasn’t that long ago when people were saying that Australia had it all over New Zealand in sport because the Aussies were more mongrel than we were.
The Aussies wanted to win at all cost, and that’s why they won things.
I remember listening to Muray Deaker on the radio banging on about New Zealand sending athletes to the Olympics to compete, when what it should be doing is sending them to the Olympics to win.
‘We’re not hungry enough’. He’d say. ‘Why’s the Government pouring all this money into sport if it doesn’t expect them to win?’ Win, win, win.
And it was within that environment that the whole...

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