Olivia Podmore was a talented New Zealand Olympic cyclist who is said to have died from a suspected suicide at her home after watching the closing ceremony of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Hours beforehand she posted on social media about the negative culture of cycling high performance, writes Ruta Mave.

 An independent inquiry later revealed widespread dysfunction where, medals were prioritised over the wellbeing of athletes.

The findings showed a number of disturbing actions of bullying and drinking culture with the coach and a large number of athletes suffering from fear of reprisals from raising issues with coaches and management. Reports naming certain red flags were made at the time to immediate superiors by the female athlete manager.

She was consequently sent home. A breach of confidentiality by a male hero in NZ sports, right up to the CEO the signs and reports were ignored. Repercussions were suffered by the females who spoke out, the men guilty of either inaction or enabling the bullying have since resigned or fallen from grace but are likely to remain in the sporting world, managing or coaching elsewhere, like China. ‘Sorry’ from cycling NZ is too little too late.

In my mind bullying of any kind should be worthy of the charge of ‘intent to injure’ People who bully do so to deliberately hurt the other person.  Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me is a myth, a lie and a fairytale that supports bullies not victims.

Until some clever lawyer brave enough to take it to the courts as a manslaughter charge and win, we will not see the end of it.  Even then the perpetrators will probably walk away untarnished, because we love to worship the bad guy sports hero especially if they win us medals, who cares how. Their motto is; winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing.

Why do we protect men who abuse their right of office and position? This is a very sad story to learn from, but we do it constantly here in our sports federations and especially by our Olympic Committee CISNOC.

Recently several questions were asked of CISNOC in the paper and were soundly ignored by the new president. How disappointing after this same newspaper, was told a new CISNOC executive board member hopes to “provide transparency and clarity in finance.” 

Senior VP looking to “bridge the gap between the executive board and our members to help grow governance and leadership within sports in the Cook Islands.”

We thought we were getting a new voice but is it true she was nominated by the since departed General Secretary and his daughter? So, whose voice will we hear? 

This was a perfect opportunity to show ‘transparency’ and display their new administration.

It is widely known both the 2023 and 2024 finances were not approved at the 2025 AGM. If the questions have to be asked in the public arena it is usually because they are not being answered from CISNOC. If they simply stated ‘we are still working on them’ instead of using distracting language, it wouldn’t appear like they are dodging being truthful.

The question “was the U21 Netball coach pushed out or jumped?”  Netball replied “it has sensitive issues, so take it up with the coach?” This also does not give the public confidence in the federation or CISNOC to handle questions let alone disputes. Furthermore, this answer creates curiosity. 

Do we have an overarching safeguarding policy for all federations? Where is the safe place to register concerns and ensure follow through? Does our national Olympic committee have the athlete wellbeing as the pinnacle of their focus or are they simply ticking boxes to get more IOC funding they can put into their own staff agendas and towards free travel to sporting events? CISNOC promise of transparency is not off to a good start and their governance? Same old same old.

We currently have two Presidents of sports federations who have been convicted due to harming others.  We have a recently resigned CISNOC Senior Vice President who two years ago pleaded guilty to assaulting three women with a machete but was allowed to remain on the board. Granted there was no conviction, thank you to the clever lawyer who said ‘my client will not do it again.’ Not long after, the lawyer becomes a member of CISNOC and goes onto Paris Olympics as the Chef de Mission. Now the ex-VP is once again in the news, due to the infamous Boxing Day knife incident seen on public social media, because police had not responded.

Why do we allow offenders to lead our sports federations? Why does no-one consider safeguarding our athletes by vetting coaches, officials and administrators? Do we need to have our talented athletes suffer or die before we act?