From the Chief Executive
Kia ora tātou,
At HSPNZ, Performance Pathways is one of our three Strategic Focus Areas in our 2025-28 Strategic Plan. But, as we know, the high performance sporting landscape changes rapidly and we need to evolve our approach to best meet its changing needs.
From 2021-24 we deliberately expanded our approach to HP athlete and coach development, to reconnect with the regions and provide more opportunities for up-and-coming athletes and coaches around the country.
Now, with our LA28 campaigns in place, as we look towards Brisbane 2032 and beyond, the need is to be much more targeted to ensure HP outcomes.
We’ve announced this month that our extremely popular Core Knowledge coaching programme, which has had more than 700 participants since 2021, will make way for more targeted HP coaching workshops, which will be co-designed with NSOs.
We remain committed to supporting the development of HP coaches, and as such our focus remains firmly on performance outcomes, ensuring TAPS athletes are getting the coaching they need to optimise performance.
The same is true of athlete development where we have moved from casting the net wide in our regional pilot projects to a targeted approach, where our focus is to support NSOs to lead athlete development with clarity, intent, and an uncompromising performance focus – creating pathways that prepare athletes for repeatable podium success by Brisbane 2032 and beyond.
In both athlete and coach pathways, we believe New Zealand can be world leading.
In this HSPNZ Update, with the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games rapidly approaching, the opening of the long-awaited dry slope training facility in the Cardrona Valley is a potential game-changer for Snow Sports NZ’s Park and Pipe athletes.
You can also read about the new digital advertising campaign we have launched in collaboration with NSOs to celebrate athlete achievements internationally and engage more New Zealanders in high performance sport.
We have also begun a four-month Balanced Athlete Health campaign to raise awareness of the balance athletes need to support their health, wellbeing and performance.
And we continue our check in with the 10 Commonwealth Games sports that will feature at Glasgow 2026, with the spotlight this month on Artistic Gymnastics.
Ngā mihi
Raelene
New HPSNZ marketing campaign aims to benefit NSOs and athletes
A new marketing campaign launched this month by HPSNZ in collaboration with NSOs aims to help increase the number of Kiwis inspired by high performance sport.
The ‘always on’ campaign began this month and will see outstanding athlete and team achievements in world championships, world cups and other pinnacle events for their sport, brought to life from week to week on digital billboards, in social media as well as the HPSNZ website. The campaign aims to reach a wide adult and youth audience who don’t know how well Kiwi athletes, especially the individuals, are doing overseas.
“The creative concept is ‘Say it proud’ where we will use a range of popular Kiwi words or phrases to congratulate athletes on their performances, along with an image of the athlete or team,” says Sport New Zealand Group Head of Marketing and Communications Kelley Toy.
“We’ve tested it with adults and young people, who both rated it highly for the ‘inspiring’ factor and it resonated strongly with the younger audience.”
The campaign’s first creative execution (pictured above) featured mountain biker, Sammie Maxwell, who won a silver medal at the recent Mountain Bike World Championships, Cross Country.
Milano Cortina 2026 – new dry slope facility ‘massive’
Snow Sports NZ staff on first day of testing dry slope facility
Milano Cortina bound slopestyle and big air athletes are already reaping the benefits of the new dry slope facility in the Cardrona Valley.
The long awaited facility is “massive”, according to Snow Sports NZ General Manager of High Performance, Luke Hetzel.
“Our snowboarders and freeskiers such as world champions Zoi (Sadowski-Synnott) and Luca (Harrington) are using the dry slope facility now and they are already getting a lot out of it,” says Luke.
Athletes – Find your balance to sustain performance
This is the first in a four part series of themes to help raise awareness of the connections between athlete wellbeing, health and performance.
Open conversations between athletes, coaches, support teams and wider support networks are critical to athletes finding the right balance to sustain their performance.
That’s the word from HPSNZ’s Dr Sue Robson, whose team has launched a campaign in collaboration with NSOs this month to promote awareness of the importance of balanced athlete health.
“The message to athletes is, ‘your wellbeing matters’. We’d like to take you on a journey over the next four months to help make some clear connections between your wellbeing, health and performance,” Sue says.
“Our goal is to make you think, generate triggers for some critical conversations and help you as an athlete recognise, appreciate and make use of your support network.”
Glasgow 2026 – Artistic Gymnasts have eyes on Glasgow
David Phillips. Photo: Dean Treml/PHOTOSPORT
As a core discipline at Commonwealth Games since 2002, Artistic Gymnastics (Men’s and Women’s) is one of 10 sports on the scaled back programme for Glasgow 2026.
Women’s Artistic Gymnastics includes four disciplines (vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise) and Men’s Artistic Gymnastics includes six (floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and horizontal high bar).
A mainstay on the Commonwealth Games sports programme since its debut as a demonstration sport in 1974, Gymnastics has a strong record with New Zealand gymnasts achieving 11 Commonwealth Games medals since 1978. Artistic Gymnasts has brought home one gold and five bronze medals over that period.
Head of Gymnastics at Gymnastics NZ, David Phillips, himself a Commonwealth Games Artistic Gymnastics bronze medallist, says the Commonwealth Games are important for the sport for two key reasons.
New Head of Coaching for HPSNZ
Nathan Luce has been appointed Head of Coaching at HPSNZ.
Nathan is a ‘career’ high performance coach and brings over 20 years of international coaching experience from roles in Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, most recently as General Manager – Performance at Canoe Racing New Zealand (CRNZ). He has had coaching or leadership positions at the past five Olympic Games.
In his most recent role with CRNZ, Nathan has led the development and implementation of its performance framework. His leadership contributed to CRNZ’s most successful Olympic campaign in Paris.
Nathan will be based in HPSNZ’s Auckland office and will lead the organisation’s coaching strategy, coaching consultancy support to NSOs, and the development of targeted initiatives across the high performance system.
He will begin his HPSNZ role on 3 November.
Navigating Finn Butcher towards the podium
Aaron Osborne and Finn Butcher Credit: NZ Team, NZOC
If you want to get your athlete to the top of an Olympic podium again, you get one of the best in the world to help you achieve that goal.
That’s the strategy of New Zealand Olympic Canoe Slalom coach Aaron Osborne as he works to help Paris Kayak Cross gold medallist Finn Butcher in his quest to repeat his winning performance at LA28.
Using his HPSNZ Prime Minister’s Coach Scholarship, Aaron is working with Craig Morris, the highly successful British Canoe Slalom Podium Technical Coach, to gain new technical skills and challenge his own current view on coaching the discipline.
Prime Minister’s Scholarship Internship applications open
Anna Taylor. Photo: Sport The Library / Photosport
Applications for the HPSNZ 2026 Prime Minister’s Scholarship internships will be open from 1 to 31 October.
Going into its fifth year, the internship programme provides the opportunity for ten athletes to gain valuable, flexible work experience that will assist their transition to real world workplaces.
Two times Paralympian and Paris 2024 silver medallist, para cyclist Anna Taylor has just started a PM’s Scholarship internship with ACC and shared her story with Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom.
Further information and Prime Minister’s Scholarship Internship applications can be found here.
The role of coaches in supporting mental health
Dylan Schmidt training in Auckland with coach Angie Dougal who has received a Prime Minister’s Scholarship through HPSNZ to enable her to bring Canadian trampolining coach Dave Ross to NZ. © image by Andrew Cornaga / www.photosport.nz
By Dr John Sullivan, HPSNZ Head of Performance Psychology
In this month’s column in our regular series on specific areas of mental health and performance, John focusses on how coaches can positively influence athletes’ mental wellbeing, including fostering open communications, creating safe spaces and recognising signs of distress. A link to further resources is provided at the end of the column.
25 years of Prime Minister’s Scholarships – Alison Shanks setting up for life after sport
Alison Shanks. 2012 Track World Championships, Melbourne
While most often thought of as one of New Zealand’s top cyclists, Alison Shanks credits her Prime Minister’s Athlete Scholarship for enabling her to move from a successful netball career and give top level cycling a go.
And then, through a Gold PM’s Scholarship at the end of her high performance sports career, to gain valuable knowledge to support her growing career in sports governance.
Alison was in the first wave of Dunedin athletes to receive a PM’s Scholarship, which she says was a huge advantage, giving her not only the opportunity to come out of university with no student loan but also to enable her to move into cycling and stay in her home environment.