BikeNZ fully committed to high performance in challenging environment

BikeNZ is fully committed to build on its success over the last four years, looking to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the 2016 Rio Olympics and beyond.

The organisation was hoping for more funding for its Olympic programme announced today by High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) based on the growth of its programme across several disciplines. However BikeNZ is buoyed by the confidence shown in them as a tier one sport with $15.6 million ear-marked for the next four years.

“We fully appreciate the challenging job of High Performance Sport New Zealand in this current economic environment,” said BikeNZ CEO, Kieran Turner.

“We look forward to continuing our close working relationship with HPSNZ over the next two years as we move to a centralised programme for riders and staff at the AvantiDrome in Cambridge.

“Our extraordinary growth along with the fluid and changing environment we are operating in will allow us to review our progress with HPSNZ in 2014 with a view to increase our funding for the crucial final two years leading into Rio.”

Mr Turner said that the growth of BikeNZ’s high performance programme, rising costs and the increased outlay for the Olympic qualification process currently equates to a significantly greater spend than what they will receive from HPSNZ.

“We will look closely at the numbers and make some hard decisions around our overall structure, which programmes we are able to commit to and the priorities in terms of the level of support.

 

“In some ways we are victims of our growth and the investment we have made. In the last four years BikeNZ has won 16 elite world championship medals on the track alone. We have seven riders or teams currently in the top five in the world across three different codes, and a further five in the top 16 who are benchmarking strongly against Olympic medallist at the same stage.

 

“Clearly under the current funding levels we will need to prioritise our investment because we won’t have the resource to deliver across all these riders and teams.”

He said the focus for 2013 is the transitioning of the business to Cambridge which will impact on BikeNZ activities and therefore Mr Turner said the organisation welcomes the review in 2014.

“That is what has happened in the last two years leading into London when we had our men’s and women’s sprint programmes developing world class results. The review in 2014 will allow us to make a case for increased spend.”

Mr Turner said BikeNZ will also need to look for other funding sources if it is to provide opportunities and pathways for some of the young talented riders who have the potential to be contenders in 2016 and 2020.

“This is at a time when our cyclists continue to deliver outstanding results across all disciplines, with more New Zealand medals won in the last three years at junior and senior world championships than all preceding years. Likewise the popularity of cycling continues to grow, as New Zealand’s third largest recreational activity.

“We would like to think that this will be seen as a valuable commodity for commercial partnerships going forward.”