Swimming NZ Gets SPARC Funding

Swimming NZ Gets SPARC Funding

Swimming New Zealand receives $450,000 SPARC funding SPARC today confirmed its funding support for Swimming New Zealand for 2003 will be $450,000 in cash, plus significantly more in support services.

It has incorrectly been reported that Swimming would receive only $200,000 for the year.

The $450,000 includes salary support for the director of coaching, competition support, training camps, funding for high performance meetings.

In addition to this high performance athletes also have access to the high performance carding system. Swimming has 50 carded athletes accessing specialist services through the NZ Academy of Sport.

SPARC CEO Nick Hill said that while Swimming had asked for a significantly greater amount, SPARC had to consider the potential across all high-performance sports and decide where its funds would have maximum impact.

"We've deliberately changed to a largely bulk-funding system for these sports so they can have greater flexibility on how they spend the money. We expect to sit down with Swimming later this year, after the July World Championships, to negotiate funding leading up to the Olympics in 2004. The World Champs will provide a useful indicator of New Zealand's Olympic potential.

More detail on SPARC's funding policy can be found at http://www.sparc.org.nz under Funding Guidelines.

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