New Zealand's Lisa Carrington (L) and New Zealand's Alicia Hoskin compete in the women's kayak double 500m semifinal of the canoe sprint competition during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Photo: BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
New Zealand has invested $162.8 million into elite athletes ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games, a total that is significantly less than some other countries are backing their athletes with.
Over the next four years, athletes from 36 sports will get funding from the High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) pool.
Funding has shrunk for 23 sports since the Paris Olympics cycle and fewer sports are getting any funding at all from HPSNZ.
Sports that are predicted to medal at the Olympics, Paralympics and World Championships get priority when the money is divided up.
Rowing gets the most of any sport at $6 million annually right through to Waka Ama, judo and Paralympic table tennis at $25,000 per annum.
HPSNZ director of high performance Steve Tew was not complaining about the amount of money available for his organisation to assign - he knew times were tough financially for New Zealand - but he recognised New Zealand was on the backfoot compared to other countries.
Australian sports will get a funding boost as they plan ahead for their home Olympics in 2032. Photo: AFP/MIGUEL MEDINA
The Australian government announced in June NZ$300 million in extra funding for sport over the next two years. The extra money took total government funding in sport up to NZ$530m over the next two years, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) said.
This week the elite sport funding body UK Sport said it will invest a record NZ$664m in Britain's Olympic and Paralympic sports for the 2028 Games.
Tew did not think comparisons could be made with those across the Tasman or on the other side of the world.
"We are a government funded agency and so while we don't have as much as we could spend we're very fortunate to have what we've got.
"We haven't been able to get the depth of investment into sports that we would like if we start thinking about the longer runway that Brisbane (2032 Olympics) is so there will be some work mid-cycle to sit down with government and talk about what we need to make sure we go to Brisbane in good shape because at this stage we're not able to give that the intention that we would like.
"The recent headlines have been big injections of cash into the Australian system, which is not surprising given a home Olympics in 2032, big injections in the UK but they're different countries different economies and they've got different pressures we just have to be grateful for what we've got and work within the constraints that we're given and we're good at that."
New Zealand was good at doing things on a relatively small amount of money across a broad range of business and industry, Tew said.
"Our athletes were the talk of the Paris Olympics not just because of the results that were achieved, but 10 gold medals is significant, and we've seen a lot happen in other sports since then it's been a pretty amazing six to nine months but ultimately to sustain that kind of success you do have to invest in the future and that's what we're trying to do."
The Paris Games was the first time HPSNZ had allocated sports funding for the entire cycle to give sports more financial security.
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