For several weeks Swimwatch has published stories with a common theme. In New Zealand sport, and in swimming in particular, administrators are paid too much and athletes are chronically underpaid. The history of Sport New Zealand during the Miskimmin reign has focused on building a massive sporting bureaucracy. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Swimming New Zealand. When Miskimmin began, swimming was run from a two room office in the Dominion Building in Wellington. The staff was one part-time lady called Donella Tait. Today Swimming New Zealand has a staff of 19 operating out of offices in Auckland that cost the organization $73,609 in rent each year.
Worse than that by a country mile is the discrepancy in the rate of pay received by sporting desk jockeys, compared to the athletes. In 2017 two employees of Swimming New Zealand received a combined $311,000. It is safe to assume that Steve Johns was paid at least half of that, $155,000 – and probably more. But even his inflated salary pales into insignificance compared to the Sport NZ chief executive’s salary, that’s Miskimmin, who was paid within the band range $390,001 to $400,000. And the ex-High Performance Sport New Zealand chief executive’s salary, that’s Baumann, who was paid within the band range $430,001 to $440,000. And in case Miskimmin and Baumann needed any help, there were another 88 Sport NZ employees paid in excess of $100,000.
When Lauren Boyle was a World Short Course Champion and a world record holder I believe she was paid in the region of $50,000 a year. Are you telling me that the woman who was the best in the world at what she did and who carried the reputation of her entire sport for a decade, was only worth one third of Steve Johns’ pay? The difference is chalk and cheese. On one hand a paper shuffler whose job a hundred New Zealanders could do better than him. And on the other hand a world record holder who no one could do as well as. And yet Swimming New Zealand values the paper shuffler three times more than the world champion. That needs to change.
But if you thought that comparison was bad, and it is, just consider the comparison with the bloated fat cats at Sport New Zealand. New Zealand valued Miskimmin eight times more than a world record holder and world champion. He sits at a desk in Wellington living off the performances of women like Lauren Boyle and pays himself eight times more than he paid her. Lauren Boyle achieved more for New Zealand sport in the 15:22.68 it took her to set a world record than Miskimmin does in a year. But she was paid eight times less.
It is all very well and good for Johns and Cotterill to wax eloquent about Lauren Boyle when she retired. This is what they said.
| She leaves the sport as a one of New Zealand’s all-time best. Boyle leaves behind a legacy in the sport that includes a remarkable 14 medals at major international meets including two silver medals won at the 2015 World Championships. Boyle is also a Commonwealth Games gold and silver medallist and a three-time Olympian. Lauren has always been a great ambassador visiting swim clubs and swim schools promoting swimming. Lauren will go down in New Zealand Swimming history as one of the greatest swimmers New Zealand has produced |
But it meant nothing. Lauren Boyle can’t eat their words or buy a car with their praise. Where it really mattered, Johns rewarded her only one third of what he gave himself. And that has to change.
And if you thought the comparison with Lauren Boyle was bad, spare a thought for the 27 current New Zealand swimmers ranked in the world’s top 200. While Miskimmin and Johns and 88 others live off the fat of the land, there are 27 talented New Zealanders being treated not much better than slave labour.
Fortunately our insurgence is on the right side of history. Completely independent from our crusade in New Zealand, world swimming is also beginning to rebel against similar oppression from FINA and the International Olympic Committee. The cause is being led by Craig Lord, owner of the SwimVortex website www.SwimVortex.com . Here is how he described the problem this week.
| “Knock. It. Down. And burn the remains.” That’s how Washington Post correspondent Sally Jenkins concludes a searing commentary under the banner “The Olympic flame has been extinguished. The USOC should be next.”
Spot on. Here’s why, from Jenkins’ home run:
The USOC is essentially defrauding us, and our champions. Blazer-wearing, propaganda-spouting executives maximize their own earnings, while devoting only the barest cash minimums and lip service to the actual care of athletes. Read every word of Jenkins’ commentary: an absolute must not just for Americans but for all of you in the world of swimming. Here is your world, a modern-day Olympic realm that Dickens could have turned his quill to: Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley, Uriah Heep, Fagin and the Artful Dodger. They’re all there somewhere in the “Olympic Family”. No wonder U.S. Athletes are demanding radical change. Not before time. There’s a huge power imbalance now and that the staff and the board have all the power … That’s really the cultural problem that exists in the Olympics. The USOC is the only avenue to the Olympics for an American. There’s no free enterprise, there’s no competition. They have a total monopoly on who the Olympians are. That monopoly power can leave athletes fearful to speak out, even if they’re abused because an Olympic dream can be dashed so easily.” The Blackmun’s of the world sit at the crossroads of luxury lifestyles: to the right of the fat-cat domestic staffers of Olympic committee-dom are the ‘executive volunteers’ in charge of the show with all expenses paid for first-class and business travel, five-star hotels, chauffeurs, fine food and wine for weeks on end with every passing event (explaining why the number of championships and events in Olympic sport has entered the league of the obese in recent years) – and then, on top, fat per diems (for what it is impossible to say unless one accepts the lame and laughable; unless one assumes it is for their extraordinary talents – but that can’t be: I’ve met some of them, like the president of FINA, and ‘mediocre’ would be a classification too far on my score card); to the left, those funding it all, NBC and an assortment of other partners and business trading off the young folk. “American Olympians clearly will endure almost anything in order to chase greatness. It makes you sick to the point of heaves wondering how many potential American champions have been knocked off podiums by abuse, or poverty, or disillusion.” The fact is that those in leadership positions in Olympic sport all too often feel no need to engage with stakeholders; they feel no need to engage with media. Time for the end of the autonomy of sport, itself among the victims of the “grotesquely bloated, lazy, selfish system of executive pay – and that world described by Andrew Jennings in “The New Lords of the Rings” that has yet to have a stake driven through its heart. Knock. It. Down. And burn the remains. |
Hear, Hear – every word applies to sport in New Zealand and especially sport in Antares Place. And so, Miskimmin, Johns, Baumann and Cotterill what’s it like to be on the wrong side of history? You may as well accept that your world is about to change. You may as well get on and support the new athlete-centred direction. Because if you don’t, reform will soon run over your burnt remains.
Swimwatch
Today
Be the first to leave a comment!