Olivia Podmore died in 2021, the day after the Tokyo Olympics - which she was not selected for - ended. Photo: Photosport
This story discusses mental health and suicide. A list of helplines is available at the bottom of the page.
The head of High Performance Sport NZ was warned in 2018 of concerns "we would have an athlete kill themselves" if the environment in Cycling NZ was not fixed, an inquest into the death of elite cyclist Olivia Podmore has heard.
The warning came from a senior doctor who had worked closely with athletes in the Cycling NZ high performance programme.
The doctor told the Coroner's Court in Hamilton on Friday that she met with former HPSNZ boss Michael Scott in June 2018 as the government agency was preparing to launch an independent inquiry into Cycling NZ's high performance programme.
The inquiry was prompted by allegations of bullying, intimidation and an inappropriate coach-athlete relationship, which surfaced in the media following the abrupt departure of one of the coaching staff.
The allegations stemmed back to an incident at a training camp in Bordeaux in 2016, just weeks out from the Rio Olympics, when Podmore inadvertently exposed an affair between a coach and athlete. The court has heard evidence this week that Podmore endured "unrelenting bullying" in the aftermath of this incident.
The inquest is nearing the end of its first week. Photo: Pool / RNZ, Cole Eastham-Farrelly
On Friday the doctor, who has interim name suppression, characterised Podmore's experiences during this time as "psychological abuse".
The doctor, who left the Cycling NZ environment in 2017 as she herself had begun to feel "unsafe", said she contacted Scott because she never felt that she had a proper, formal exit interview when she left and had not "got her concerns across well enough".
In her statement to the Coroner's Court, the health practitioner said she told Scott "athletes were at risk".
"I told Michael Scott that I thought there were athletes at risk and that if we didn't fix the environment in Cycling NZ, I was concerned that we would have an athlete that would kill themselves," the doctor's brief of evidence states.
"I was in a position then, having left the environment and having had a lot of time to reflect, that the whole period following Bordeaux and Rio was so much worse than I had thought at the time. I thought it was bad, but it wasn't until I left Cycling NZ that I realised how bad it really was."
The medical practitioner said her view was not based on "any formal assessment or recent knowledge I had about those athletes", but rather a "gut instinct" based on the significant stress she could see the incident had placed on athletes and staff.
Coroner Luella Dunn is presiding over the inquest Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
On Friday, the doctor told the inquest that she told Scott that if leaders did not properly act on the findings of the inquiry, which was still in the process of being instigated at that point, "we could lose someone".
Asked how many athletes she considered to be at risk, the doctor responded:
"I would have said more than half would have been experiencing psychological distress, in terms of risk, I recall in my brain, again I didn't share names, but three specific athletes I was concerned about."
The doctor said Scott was extremely responsive to her concerns, and immediately put her in touch with Mike Heron KC, who had been commissioned to lead the inquiry.
The health practitioner said she spoke to Heron twice for the 2018 review, and also fed into the 2021 independent inquiry, which was prompted by Podmore's suspected suicide in August that year.
"I've now met with Michael Heron three times," she said.
"When I met with him in 2021, he noted, 'You raised quite a few of these concerns in our first interview.'"
"Significant breach" in safeguarding
The doctor, who was at the Bordeaux camp that triggered the faultline in the programme, said the incident had a clear impact on Podmore's Rio Olympic campaign.
She told the court that she felt a lot of "the panic and emotion" displayed by Podmore at the Games was a result of what she experienced in the build-up.
"To me it felt incredibly significant that she was made to feel quite unsafe by what happened and I was really concerned that for someone so young to be … thrown into the middle of something that she genuinely had no idea of, right before her first Olympic Games.
"To me, the flow-on effect [in Rio], so much of it could be attributed to how confusing and how traumatising she seemed to be finding her place in the team and how to navigate that."
The doctor said at that point she believed the conduct issues from the coach in both Bordeaux and Rio were so serious that Cycling NZ would have no choice but to act when the team returned from the Games.
"I admit I reassured Olivia things would be different post-Rio, because I felt this was a significant breach in terms of safeguarding," she said.
Former High Performance Sport NZ chief executive Michael Scott Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook
The doctor said she participated in the Rio debrief process and was interviewed by another senior health practitioner, along with HPSNZ general manager Eddie Kohlhase, and "did not leave anything unspoken".
"It was not sustainable"
The extensive debrief process did not lead to any meaningful action from from Cycling NZ and HPSNZ bosses, the doctor told the court. Instead, the environment in the high performance programme continued to deteriorate through 2017, prompting the health practitioner to resign.
"It was not sustainable. It was a feeling of 'I don't think I can be effective here, I don't feel safe'," she said.
"I think people were listening to me, but the really important part of it is once it is raised ... the response and the review has to be quick, and I think the limbo for people in waiting for things to get better, can be quite damaging."
The senior health practitioner recalled Podmore being emotional at the farewell, and asking "who is going to look after me now?"
Asked if she was also bullied by the coach, the doctor said she believed many at Cycling NZ were intimidated by his behaviour.
In her evidence, the doctor recalled how early on in her tenure, the coach walked into her consult room, locked the door and told her that he needed her to prescribe him sleeping pills.
"It doesn't mean he got them, but there's an attempt there," she said.
"I'm lucky, I managed to put a boundary in very quickly of 'This is who I am, and this is what I'm about and I won't be pushed around'."
After leaving the cycling programme in 2017, the doctor said she did not have any further contact with Podmore in a clinical setting before her death, but kept in touch with the talented young cyclist.
While she had no direct knowledge of Podmore's challenges in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games, the doctor said the impact on Podmore of not being selected for Tokyo Games would have been "devastating".
"Especially after having a really hard Rio experience, to then not be able to come out and rectify some of those things is very hard. It's very hard to not go out on your terms," she said.
The doctor told the court she had been encouraged by shifting attitudes to athlete welfare during her time in the system.
She highlighted a recent athlete safeguarding workshop she took part in with up-and-coming coaches, describing the conversations and level of understanding among coaches about the issues they need to be attuned to as "healing".
"It just felt amazing to me actually, that we were sitting there talking about how to keep athletes safe."
Emotional statement
There was an emotional end to the first week of the hearing, when the doctor asked to finish her testimony with a prepared statement.
In a moving statement, the doctor told of how Podmore's death has prompted her to continue her work in providing education in safeguarding in an effort to improve the culture of high performance sport both nationally and internationally.
She finished by addressing Podmore's family directly.
"I'm deeply sorry for the loss of your beautiful girl. I am incredibly fond of her, and developed a very close bond with her during my time at cycling," the doctor said through tears.
"I saw the love at her funeral in Christchurch when I [attended] to say my goodbyes.
"I struggle to put into any words how sorry I am for your loss and that her journey was so challenging when we needed to keep her safe."
The doctor's words moved the family, Coroner Louella Dunn, and several of the legal representatives in the courtroom to tears.
The inquest continues next week.
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