A $2.3 million white elephant: The curious case of Canoe Racing NZ's deserted high performance centre

In 2018, Canoe Racing NZ opened the doors to a $2.3 million purpose-built high performance centre on the shore of Lake Karāpiro. Seven years on, it sits empty.

High above the silty shore of Lake Karāpiro, Canoe Racing NZ's high performance centre looms desolate and lifeless.

The carpark, but for a lone, empty boat trailer, is deserted. The grounds are still.

The building itself, a sprawling 550 square-metre monument to unadorned functionality, is locked up.

Through bird-poo streaked windows there are chairs stacked high in the corner of the lounge, and an empty gym where motivational posters shout into a void.

"It's pretty farcical, but it's hardly a surprise that this is where things have ended up," a Sport NZ source says of the abandoned site. "To me, the whole thing seemed a bit misguided from the start."

This $2.3 million purpose-built facility was supposed to be home to the country's top canoe sprint athletes.

Funded through a mix of central and local government investment along with gaming trust grants, the centre opened in 2018 with the goal of becoming the "focal point" for Canoe Racing NZ's high-performance programme, according to then-chief executive Mark Weatherall.

"A world class canoe facility will be crucial in creating the daily high performance environment that ultimately produces more Kiwi paddlers on podiums, more often,'' Weatherall said.

In the seven years since, Canoe Racing NZ has indeed produced more paddlers on podiums, more often. But these athletes were not developed on the water of Karāpiro.

The elite women's squad, spearheaded by Olympic great Dame Lisa Carrington, has continued to be based out of Auckland since the centre's opening. The majority of the sport's high coaching and high performance staff have also remained in Auckland.

The men's programme did, however, make the move to Karāpiro, where it has been based for the past two Olympic cycles.

But following a review of the team's Paris campaign, the athletes were last month informed the national body was relocating the men's programme back to Auckland.

Canoe Racing NZ chief executive Graham Oberlin-Brown said after consultation with the athletes, the decision was made to base the men's squad in Auckland on a six-month trial basis.

He told RNZ in a written statement the trial "is to leverage the things we are doing well in Auckland for the benefit of the overall programme".

"While we are trialling a shift for the men's programme to Auckland, Cambridge remains a critical hub for the wider athlete pathway with approximately 50 development athletes benefiting from the facility," wrote Oberlin-Brown, who declined to be interviewed.

The Karāpiro facility will still be used by the elite squads for training camps, as well as for "competitions, performance systems, development initiatives and equipment", Oberlin-Brown added.

But the Sport NZ source, who asked not to be named as they are not authorised to speak on behalf of the organisation, pointed out this is a significant deviation from the building's original purpose.

"The whole thinking behind the facility was for canoe racing to run their HP programmes and operations out of there full time. It wasn't built so they can have a nice place to go on camp," the source said.

How to build a white elephant

The warnings were there from the start.

A 2013 Sport NZ-commissioned feasibility study, which assessed four potential sites for Canoe Racing NZ's new training centre, highlighted the danger of the facility becoming obsolete if it was not used as a training base by the elite squads.

"Essentially it will be a failure of the [high performance training centre] if it locates in an area where athletes are not prepared to live during the season," the report, written by management consultant Peter Dale, read.

"This is how white elephants are developed."

But Dale said "undue emphasis" should not be placed on the fact that most of the elite squad lived and trained in Auckland at that time.

"In the end this is a decision about a long term national centralised training facility."

The report ultimately concluded that Karāpiro was the best location due to the off-water advantages Cambridge offered in terms of "hot-housing" high performances services with Rowing NZ and Cycling NZ, which also set up centralised programmes in Cambridge in the early 2010s.

Lake Pupuke - a heart-shaped freshwater lake within a volcanic crater on Auckland's North Shore - where much of the squad already trained, was not considered a suitable location as it did not have a long enough stretch for K4 boats to train on, according to the 2013 report.

But by the time the centre opened its doors in 2018, it became clear that more emphasis should have been placed on the preferences of the athletes. New Zealand's elite women's paddlers elected to stay in Auckland where many had put down roots.

At the time, it was of some embarrassment that the most recognisable names in the sport were not training out of the newly-built high performance centre.

The thinking was that over successive Olympic cycles, the athletes would gravitate to Karāpiro and Canoe Racing NZ would eventually shift all its operations there.

Seven years on the "build it and they will come" theory still has not panned out.

In the turnover of athletes following the Paris Olympics, Oberlin-Brown said the balance in the men's programme has shifted, leaving just one member of the squad living in Cambridge and the remaining five in Auckland.

Oberlin-Brown defended his organisation doubling up on costs to lease space in Auckland and Karāpiro, claiming the Cambridge building did not have the capacity for the organisation's 11 staff.

"We will continue to use both Auckland and Karapiro as we have done for the last decade … the Karāpiro facility currently has capacity for four office desks, which means we have always utilised office space in addition to the Karāpiro building," he wrote.

However, official documents reveal the centre was built for the purpose of housing all of the sport's operations.

Former Canoe Racing NZ chief executive Mark Weatherall also confirmed to RNZ the original intent for the Karāpiro facility was that the sport's head office would relocate there.

"Ultimately the long term plan was for canoe racing's headquarters to be based [in Cambridge]. I don't know if that has changed or not, all I can say is that was the plan in my time there," says Weatherall.

Sport NZ chipped in $1.6 million towards the build of the Karāpiro facility, which sits on leasehold land owned by the Wāipa District Council.

Asked whether the government agency considered that to be a wise investment in light of the facility no longer being used as a daily training base for the elite paddlers seven years on, Sport NZ boss Raelene Castle says the centre is still an important asset for canoe racing.

"I think in hindsight you might have looked at a different outcome, but the reality is, over a six or seven-year period, programmes evolve," says Castle, who took on the top job at Sport NZ in late 2020.

However, Castle disagreed that the Karāpiro facility could be deemed a "failure" as forewarned in Sport NZ's own commissioned study.

"The centre's been well used by the male athletes in CRNZ's high performance programme and also for CRNZ's development programme. The men's programme has made significant gains in that time. While we understand it was originally intended to be a home for the women's programme as well, circumstances have meant this didn't happen.

"[Sport NZ] is supportive of the requirement by the athletes ... to be based at Lake Pupuke if this is where they will continue to thrive and achieve."

Oberlin-Brown also rejected the contention that the facility not being used on a daily basis rendered the Karāpiro centralisation experiment a failure.

"The report was dated 2013 and now in 2025 some 12 years on, we have just had the best Olympic and Paralympic podium performances in the sport's history. All of our athletes have circulated through the centre at Karāpiro and will continue to do so," he wrote.

New Zealand's women's squad has won six Olympic gold medals - three in single seat boats, three in crew boats, with Carrington the common denominator (or dominator) in all - over the past two cycles.

Hastings-based paddler Peter Cowan also won Canoe Racing NZ's first paralympic medal, when he claimed bronze in the men's 200m VL3 event in Paris last year.

While officials continue to defend the Karāpiro facility, several members of the canoe racing community have claimed the decision to build the centre in Cambridge, where the sport did not previously have strong ties, was ill-advised.

One former athlete, who did not want to be named as "I don't want to get myself in trouble" pointed out canoe racing is a sport with close links to surf lifesaving, and many of the athletes favour a beach lifestyle.

"A lot of paddlers are beach kids, we grew up close to the ocean and that's our happy place. Thinking the athletes would all want to live in the middle of the Waikato just shows they didn't properly think about who they were building this thing for," they said.

Castle says it would be "inappropriate" for her 12 years on to make a judgment on whether the decision to locate the facility in Karāpiro was the right one.

The Sport NZ boss did acknowledge that in the decade since the report was commissioned, the thinking around centralisation has changed.

While crew boat programmes requires the athletes to all train out of the same centre, there is increased recognition of the risk to athlete welfare created by forcing athletes to move away from their home networks.

"There's certainly been a focus from High Performance Sport NZ to talk to sports about making sure that athlete wellbeing is at the forefront of conversations around centralisation. So many sports are making different decisions than what they would be previously," Castle said.

The 'bricks and mortar' era

Canoe Racing NZ's Karāpiro facility was also born from a different era of high performance sport investment.

Back in the early 2010s the National government of the day was all about infrastructure, pumping billions of dollars into key roading projects, a national cycle trail, port and rail upgrades, and telecommunications networks.

Sport NZ also got in on the building bonanza, committing tens of millions into "bricks and mortar" projects around the country, with the aim of professionalising the daily training environments of the country's elite athletes.

The government agency released a sports facilities framework alongside this, encouraging public-private partnerships to upgrade New Zealand's network of sporting infrastructure.

Among Sport NZ's stated goals for its strategy was to build "sustainable facilities developed in the right locations" and for all targeted sports to "have world-leading HP centres by 2018".

"It may seem to be stating the obvious to say that facilities should meet an identified need and be fit-for-purpose," the undated strategy document read.

"Experience shows, however, that there is often insufficient rigour applied to this fundamental question. The best outcomes are achieved when all of the potential users of the facility are identified and a deep understanding gained of the range of needs that they will have."

Plans for a new high performance facility for Canoe Racing NZ were first mooted in June 2010, when then prime minister John Key and Murray McCully, the then minister for sport and recreation, announced it was committing $40m towards a network of elite training facilities, including "rowing and canoe racing high performance centres at Lake Karāpiro".

The 2010 announcement suggests canoe racing's high performance centre had been earmarked for Karāpiro long before Sport NZ commissioned a feasibility study, which looked at Lake Pupuke, Rotorua's Lake Tikitapu (also known as the Blue Lake) and the Wairoa River near Tauranga as alternate sites.

Official documents reveal there was some initial reluctance by canoe racing officials when a centralised programme was first proposed for Karāpiro.

A Sport NZ briefing document in May 2013 to McCully said there had been some "to-ing and fro-ing over the location" but Canoe Racing NZ had come to accept the findings of Dale's report.

"With our encouragement the CRNZ board endorsed the report and developed a strategy to centralise its high performance programme."

Mark Weatherall, who led Canoe Racing NZ from 2014 to 2018, said he was aware prior to taking on the role as chief executive there had been "discussion and debate" from the board over the location of the centre.

"The board made the decision and then I was tasked as part of my role as CEO to project manage the build and ultimately move the men's squad down there. I wasn't involved in the debate around whether we should centralise [in Karāpiro] or not, I came in after that all happened," he said.

The day the centre opened its doors coincided with Weatherall's final day at the national body.

Ironically, Weatherall later ended up at Rowing NZ working out of the sport's headquarters just a stone's skip down the lake from the facility he oversaw the build of.

"I used to joke with [former Rowing NZ CEO] Simon Peterson when he was at rowing that [canoe racing] had the best position. We had a great view up on top of the hill. And then of course I moved next door to rowing so then I experienced it from the other side."

Today, the view from Canoe Racing NZ's centre overlooking the shimmering ribbon of water remains just as spectacular.

From the vantage point of the front terrace you can see the procession of long-limbed rowers in their socks and birkenstocks arriving next door for training.

Meanwhile, at the canoe racing facility, cobwebs have worked their way into the crevices of the expansive sliding doors. A thin film of silt has settled on the glass, and lichen coats the bannisters, as if the building is quietly beginning to fossilise.

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