BikeNZ gets $15.6 million in Olympic, Commonwealth Games funding

BikeNZ will receive $15.6 million over the next four years as part of its funding base heading into the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the 2016 Rio Olympics.

High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ), a government subsidiary responsible for channelling investment into the various sporting programs, provides around $60 million in funding each year.

"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."

Turner explained that BikeNZ is likely to spend more, given the growth of the high performance program, rising costs and the increased outlay for the Olympic qualification process, than what will be available through 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."

Bike NZ will be on the lookout for other funding sources with a review of its practices due in 2014.

 

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