In My Opinion – Useless, Smug, Arrogant

Three sports stand out as being most influenced by the CEO of Sport NZ, Peter Miskimmin – Swimming, Cycling and Rowing.

Plenty has been said about Swimming New Zealand (SNZ). Over twenty years and at a taxpayer cost of $30million SNZ has not won a medal at an Olympic Games. By every measure the sport is in decline. Membership is down. Income is down. Results are down. People plead with me to look for and write about the positives. Here is an email I got, last week, from a SNZ supporter written from a prayer mat outside Steve Johns’ office door.

I’ve known the author of the email for quite some time. He always has been a sycophant to the rich and powerful but this effort at greasing up to those in power is exceptional. Exceptional but not alone. Recently, from New Orleans, I got a message that I should “Surround myself with positivity.” These critics should know better. Why?

Because the most cursory look at the Swimwatch web pages would discover many positive things written about swimming. I recommend the author read about the Bream Bay Swim Meet or the HBPB Championships, or Eyad’s swimming progress, or the contribution of Judith Wright and Norma Williams, or the Counties Championships.

In fact there is only one thing I don’t like about swimming. And that is the stuff that goes on behind the glass door of the SNZ Antares place office. The author of the email is on a prayer mat worshiping at that door. I want to take a hammer and see shards of SNZ glass scattered along the Upper Harbour Motorway. And with good cause. Is the author of this email saying it is right to charge New Zealand’s best swimmers $5,300 to represent the country at a World Championships? Does the author of the email think it is right that I should be denied access to a report on my coaching? I doubt that he does think those things, and many others, are right. Problem is he’s too busy sucking up to his mates inside the glass door to speak out about their disgusting behaviour.

That email says much about why we have wasted two generations of New Zealand swimmers and $30million. The email’s author must have heard the expression, “Bad people get away with bad things when good people say nothing.” He should know better than to ask me to join him as a SNZ enabler. It will not happen.

The second useless, smug and arrogant sport is Cycling New Zealand (CNZ). The non-selection of Hamish Bond this week is straight out of the SNZ playbook. Here is how the Stuff website reported what happened.

Bond breaks a national record, beats a world champion and offers to pay his own way and CNZ still won’t pick him. How does that happen? In my opinion it happens because bureaucrats in the CNZ Head Office decided Bond was getting too big for his boots. CNZ needed to take control. They have given all sorts of pathetic excuses for not selecting Bond but the real reason is to teach him a lesson – to show that rowing upstart who’s really in charge. It is pathetic. It should not happen but it is what New Zealand sport under Peter Miskimmin has become.

And the third useless, smug and arrogant sport is Rowing New Zealand (RNZ). RNZ is beginning to put together a list of administration disasters matched only by SNZ. RNZ had the best coach in the world. But now he’s coaching the Canadian national team. In moves similar to the treatment of SNZ coach, Mark Regan, RNZ made life so difficult for Dick Tonks he had no option but to leave. The real problem though was the same as the Hamish Bond saga. RNZ was scared of Tonks’ success. They saw his popularity as a threat. He had to go. Management of a Miskimmin sport is not about winning and losing – it’s about money and power.

The attitude of RNZ to athletes wanting to use their athletic ability to fund a university education further confirms their useless and smug arrogance. How dare a sport in New Zealand deny any New Zealander the right to a free education. How dare a sport penalise young New Zealanders for choosing to better themselves at a good American university. How dare they. As I have said through the post – useless, smug and arrogant. The table below shows a Television New Zealand report on RNZ’s education failings.