Lack of officials a problem for national athletics champs

A sudden shortfall in officials has left Athletics New Zealand scrambling ahead of the national championships.

Several internationally-based and local officials have withdrawn from the New Zealand Track and Field Championships due to the cost of helping out.

Athletics New Zealand need around 130 officials to run the meet and the current tally sits at 100.

This year's meet will be held from 5 to 7 March at Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park in Hastings where a number of potential Olympians will be competing.

The drop in the number of available officials was a result of the flow-on effect of Covid-19, according to Athletics New Zealand's officials development manager Trevor Spittle.

Twelve people from Australia had originally signed on to officiate at this year's three-day meet, but decided they could not justify the expense of flights and quarantine and opted out.

"Traditionally we have 10 to 15 Australians over the past 10 years coming over having a holiday and officiating at our champs," Spittle said.

"This will be in response to some of us going over there for the last 20 years and officiating over there to get the experience of another country."

It's not just the overseas-based officials who are no longer able to attend.

"The other difference is we've had a lot of our older officials retire after Christchurch last year, so there's another eight to 10 in that range," Spittle said.

"We also have a situation where a lot of officials around the country, because they have to pay their own way to get there, they get their accommodation provided but their travel expense for themselves is a bit expensive and they've said 'no we can't afford it this year we haven't been working as much with the Covid situation,' some have lost jobs, others have had to tighten their belts because they have had hours reduced."

If the shortfall in officials can not be remedied some events will be effected by delays during the meet.

"It just means we have to operate with the less than ideal number of officials and we may have to pull helpers from over the fence if necessary . We frequently at a local level will do this around the country, with coaches coming in, but coaches don't like having to officiate when they are actually coaching in the national championships."

All of the officials with the top qualifications in New Zealand have already signed up, Spittle said.

"The ones we are actually looking for are the newcomers to the sport or someone who would like to get involved in the sport and they can be taught very quickly to do a role on any event, track or field.

"The referees and chiefs we've got plenty of them, we just need people who are keen to be in the sport. It's the best seat in the house - right there at the event, you're not sitting up in a grandstand a long way away in the cold, you're out there with the athletes, meeting the top athletes and this year because our athletes aren't travelling overseas we will have all our Olympic possibles in attendance."

Spittle first got involved with officiating 35 years ago, when his children were competing, and now he had tickets to go to Tokyo for the Olympics and Paralympics.

"I've done four Commonwealth Games now, having not been a person that was involved in the sport, just got interested in it and carried on.

"A lot of the officials, probably 50 percent, are like that they got involved when their children were competing and their children in a lot of cases no longer compete, a lot of them are ex-athletes themselves so there are a variety of people who get involved in it."

The new officials did not need a lot of athletics knowledge, Spittle said.

"Just someone who is prepared to come and jump over the fence and help because we need people for retrieving implements, we need people to pull tapes through and even recording the results can be very quickly be trained and shown how to do that the best ones are the younger ones that are more up to speed with their math working out the results but there is always a chief or referee there who will guide them through it."

Athletics New Zealand were actively training the next generation of officials around the country over the past year but the cost of getting to events could be prohibitive for some.

"A lot of them who have been trained will become the top officials in the next five to 10 years ... but they are generally new to the sport and say 'well I can't really afford to go to nationals or it's not something that interests me at this point'".

People interested in officiating can register on the Athletics New Zealand website.