My dad is one of these people. Some people don't see eye to eye with him but he is honest and will tell you exactly what he thinks. There is no beating around the bush, you know exactly where you stand with him. Sometimes as a coach you have to tell people things they may not want to hear. He is willing to spend many unpaid hours promoting a sport that he has a great passion for and often doesn't even get a thank you in return.
In New Zealand we have lacked publicity and recognition for quite some time. In recent years we have had government funding to help back us financially, but we still struggled to get it in the public eye.
When my family moved back to South Canterbury in 2004 it was time to start changing this. We got the support of an enthusiastic sports reporter that was willing to take an interest in local talent. Regular stories in my cities news paper helped build the profile of the sport. With my success over the years and my dad's countless emails more results and stories started making the headlines. People starting reading and learning about the sport. We went from having about five club members to now having over one hundred and sixty. There is also a large group of people who take great interest in reading about what I'm up to in the newspaper.
In 2006 skating hit the public's eye not just in Timaru but nationwide when I done a series of nude photo's. I featured on TV shows, in magazine articles, mentioned in nearly every news paper and had plenty of radio interviews. Even though it was a bold move and a little controversial it was a start in the right direction.
To this day I still get asked about the photo's and people are still talking about them. Even though I'm not bombarded by publicity now, like I was when the photo's first came out I still appear on the odd TV show and results/articles are starting to spread nationwide on a more frequent basis. A lot of this has to do with my dad. He not only pushes my results out there to the media in New Zealand but others as well, regardless of who they are sponsored by or have ties too.
This is a snippet from Radio Sports news section. Radio Sport is our nations number one radio channel dedicated to sport. Even though it is only a small mention, it's a start and no doubt it was mentioned on the radio as well.
The only reason this article along with many others make it to the news section is because my dads commitment. Along the line somewhere someone will pick up on the story. If they get positive feed back from it and interest from the public next time they will be chasing you for the story.
Here is another example and this was on Stuff's sports section, which is New Zealand's number one online news source from Fairfax Media.
And another example from Stuff's sports section.
If even one tenth of the skating population was able to push for a little recognition our great sport would start thriving. Unfortunately not everyone is selfless and a lot of people end up giving up. We have a great sport it's just so many people out there don't even realize it exists.
What is sad for me to see is when someone is pushing for the good of the sport and they are willing to help people for free and those people they help can not even go out of their way an inch to give something back in return. They sacrifice a lot of their life to give everything to others and then those people become shallow and can not even say thanks.
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