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Rower Eric Murray celebrates his Olympic gold medal - Source: Reuters -
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High Performance Sport NZ chief executive Alex Baumann has hinted his organisation expects an even bigger Olympic medal haul at Rio de Janeiro in four years - but not necessarily gold.
After a highly successful London Olympics, where New Zealand win six gold medals, two silver and five bronze - 13 in total - the country's sport funding body now faces the task of prioritising towards the next Games and Baumann warned there would be some "hard decisions" made.
"I think our goal will be to increase the medal production," Baumann told ONE Breakfast. "I'm not sure about six gold medals - I think that may be a little bit difficult to repeat.
"But we have a lot of good athletes in the system and one of the key things for us is to provide sustainability, so we can get repeatable results. Sometimes that's a balance between looking for that pinnacle event and making sure we have secure resources long term."
Most of the NZ Olympic team returned home today, greeted by family and friends. Their results made for themost successful medal haul since Seoul in 1988, where New Zealand also had 13 medals, and Los Angeles four years earlier, where we won eight gold medals.
But HPSNZ aren't spending too much time slapping themselves on the back. Baumann, who won gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics as a member of the Canadian swimming team, said sports federations would re-submitt their high performance plans in November and his organisation would deliver their ongoing funding strategy in December.
"I do think some hard decisions will have to be made moving forward.
"It's not really a reward for the performance in London. We have to take a look at the medal potential of the sports, what athletes they have in the stystem, what coaches they have in the system and what structure there is as well.
"We have to re-prioritise. One of the successes of the New Zealand system is that there has been a very targeted and prioritised approach in terms of how many sports we actually support."
And while rowing's success at London - three gold and two bronze - has many promoting that model as one other sports should emulate, Baumann warns it wouldn't suit them all.
"Rowing have been very successful because they've had a centralised programme," he said. "They've had high-quality coaches, the culture at Karapiro is fantastic and they have such a high work ethic - I think that has contributed to their success.
"We're certainly trying to repeat that in other centres, but each sport is slightly different. The new velodrome going into Cambridge gives cycling a great opportunity to suceed, but other sports like swimming, where they rely on a very strong club structure, might be a different situation.
"I think we're in a good place, but we'll have to cut our cloth accordingly and make some difficult decisions."