One team, one sport

New Zealand was the envy of many nations at Athens. All our medal winners were celebrated back to the village with a haka – something no other team came close to matching. As Chef de Mission Dave Currie recalls, the haka created "extraordinarily powerful moments of honour and achievement. It was hairs on the back of the neck stuff."

The haka were a vivid demonstration of what the New Zealand Olympic Committee's Chef de Mission and athlete support team is all about - creating a New Zealand Olympic team that is secure, strong and unerringly focused on high performance.

"The power of 17 sports coming together is far more powerful than any one athlete or any one sport. My job as Chef de Mission is to create the environment [during the Games] that will help the athletes fulfill the role they've been aiming for so many years," Currie says.

Central to the job is creating the right physical environment. At Beijing, Maori carvings will stand over the entranceway to the New Zealand camp. Expansive silver fern banners will help "nurture and protect" the team. Ngai Tahu iwi have gifted a superb piece of pounamu (greenstone) which will become a touchstone.

"It's about embracing the things that make us unique as a nation. It's also about understanding and respecting the environment we're coming into, understanding that China has a 6000 year culture, and understanding the role the Chinese community has played in New Zealand for more than 150 years. It's about acknowledging linkages. About showing respect," illuminates Currie.

Reflecting this, he says a sculpture of a dragon presented by the Chinese community in New Zealand will have a prominent place in the village.

One team, one spirit is also about respect between team members. As Currie puts it "this is a high performance environment. As an athlete you respect that. The support team will give you respect. You need to extend the same respect to the rest of the team".

The athlete support team (Currie points out the word is "support" and not "management") consists of Sarah Ulmer, Hamish Carter, Dallas Seymour, Robyn Wong and Alison Fitch. With Currie, they will head to Beijing on 20 July.

The support team's first job will be to "decorate the village" – to create the New Zealand environment. The athletes' village at Beijing is made up of numerous six- and nine-level tower blocks. The entire New Zealand contingent will neatly take up one of these - block B8.

That's more significant than it might at first seem. Eight is a lucky number for the Chinese, to the point that the Games are scheduled to start at eight minutes past eight, on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008.

"Our Chinese colleagues tell us we are very lucky to be in B8," Currie reflects.

On 28 July, the New Zealand men's rowing team will arrive at the village. "From then, a lot of my day will be spent welcoming athletes". As well as being welcomed with a haka, each athlete will later be formally presented with a personal team book, a pounamu pendant and a shirt for the opening ceremony.

"We will make sure everyone settles in and has their pre-competition training all sorted out". By 6 August most of the New Zealand team will have arrived and there will be a formal flag raising ceremony. On the next evening, there will be a team function, and the flag bearer for the opening ceremony will be announced. As at Athens, the New Zealand flag bearer will wear a kakahu, or cloak.

Currie will also squeeze in trips to the equestrian venue in Hong Kong and to the sailing venue at Quingdau. He emphasises a real effort is being made to extend the "one team" vibe for athletes competing outside Beijing, with video links during the flag raising ceremony for example.

Once Games competition starts, the focus for the support team will turn to helping athletes prepare for competition, helping the team to celebrate successes, and supporting those who don't realise their goals.

"It's all about making the boat go faster. Everything I do is making sure the high performance environment is maintained," elaborates Currie. "We're asking the athlete to go places where they've never been before. To be a champion you have to risk absolutely everything. We need to create an environment that does everything possible to help them to get it right".

"As Sir Murray Halberg shared with us recently, the Olympics is the only event where six years out you know the date, the time, the place and the likely conditions. You have six years to practise - so there's no excuses. You've got to leave no questions"

Dave Currie was Chef de Mission ("leader of the delegation") for the New Zealand team at the Sydney Paralympics. He followed that by being Chef de Mission for the New Zealand team to the Manchester (2002) and Melbourne (2006) Commonwealth Games; and for the Athens Olympic Games (2004).

Currie lives in Raglan but he grew up in South Auckland. He credits that, and his past roles like being Chairman of the Otara Flea Market, as giving him a "healthy disregard for authority". As he says, "I'm more concerned with the athletes". The connection is strengthened by his background as a national class marathon runner (with a best of 2 hrs 21 min) and 12 years as race director of the Auckland Iron Man. Currie remains a keen kayaker and mountain biker.

Updated | 31 Oct 2008.

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