Six years of New Zealand's Olympic preparations coming to a head

With only a month to go until the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, the New Zealand team looks well placed to achieve its targets set when planning for the Games began in 2006.

With the most reliable indicator of Olympic performance being how athletes and teams performed in the previous year at their respective world championships, in 2011, New Zealanders had 21 podium finishes at these events - its best ever result in a pre-Olympic year.

High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) Chief Executive Alex Baumann explains "with the team performing at this level we should be able to achieve our target of 10 medals or more, and if we do that we'll get New Zealand's 100th Olympic medal."

HPSNZ was formed in 2011, from a merger of the New Zealand Academies of Sport and the high performance unit of Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC, now Sport New Zealand).

Baumann adds "over the past six years our people have worked extensively with athletes and teams in the targeted Olympic sports (athletics, cycling, rowing, yachting, swimming and triathlon) and other medal-potential sports.

"Those people include strength and conditioning specialists, performance and technique analysts, nutritionists, physiologists, doctors, psychologists/mental skills trainers and many others.

"In addition, the Government has invested around $180 million into high performance sport in the past four years. Much of that money has gone into supporting our Olympic athletes in their preparations for London, and Rio in 2016. As well as direct support for athletes the money has also funded new world-class sports facilities around the country.

"When it's all added together New Zealanders have every reason to be hopeful of a successful London Games. And whatever the result I know that, like me, they'll be proud of the effort put in by our athletes and the support crews they've worked with."

For more information go to www.hpsnz.org.nz