Faith Kipyegon of Kenya running the 1500 metres at the Tokyo Olympics. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Athletics is one of the glamour sports on the world stage, especially at the Olympics, but for many nations having athletes competing at the highest level is nothing more than a dream.
Annette Purvis wants to change that to give every country a chance to have athletes competing.
Purvis, a long time athletics administrator, has just become the first New Zealand women to be elected to the World Athletics Council.
She started her own athletics career at the Technical club in Auckland, but by the time she was 18 her coach soon recognised that she was a better organiser than an athlete and had her on the committee. She's been administering ever since.
Purvis has served on a couple of World Athletics committees before but at their recent congress she grab the third highest number of votes from the 23 nominees for the 13 elected positions at the top table.
"Through my work with the Development Commission (at World Athletics) I focused on member federations and what they needed in order to thrive," she told RNZ.
"Even things like internet connection and power in some parts of the world is an issue and while funding goes to these countries it's not always utilised in the best possible way."
Purvis says her passion is the growth of those federations.
"I'm really driving for a premiss that one size doesn't fit all and that through tailoring and addressing needs we might be able to lift the level right around the world."
With 214 federations, many of those struggling financially, she admits it's a challenge.
"Very much the current world plan focusses on how we might be able to use our funding smarter and how we might use stronger nations to help others."
So how about the Oceania region? She's reasonably happy.
"We're blessed with a lot of people that are really interested in athletics."
New Zealand athletics administrator Annette Purvis Photo: Athletics NZ
The Cook Islands recently won a World Athletics award with their kids athletics programme.
"It was innovative, it went to the people and it was engaging," she said.
"They're no different to some of the other countries around the world where sustainability of education, material and people and resources is important.
"But there are some amazing people and we just have to make sure they have the right tools and support to be successful.
"It's really incumbent, not just on World Athletics, but also the bigger countries in our region like Australia and New Zealand to play our role and make sure we're supporting our whole region to be successful and not just ourselves."
Purvis admits athletics in New Zealand also has its challenges.
"The history and legacy for athletics in New Zealand is amazing but the way people are engaging and participating is changing and so World Athletics also needs to consider that.
"How do we stay relevant to the younger people and get them out and move and run."
She was board chair at Athletics New Zealand from 2006 through to 2018 and is currently a board member of High Performance Sport NZ and the New Zealand Olympic Committee.
Purvis says the issue of attracting and keeping people at the community level was well discussed at the recent Athletics New Zealand AGM.
Kids compete at the Colgate Games in New Zealand. Photo: Athletics NZ Alisha Lovrich
"Children's athletics is massive, it's part of the primary school curriculum, it's just at those teenage years you get that drop-off.
"You don't really play athletics, you compete, so how do you engage the people that just want to keep fit, or throw something or jump.
"So there's a challenge there in our mindset around how we keep teenagers engaged.
"Is it truly a competition format or is there something more around social cohesion connectivity community and how we might we adapt our sport and that's a global challenge.
"Once it becomes more competitive it can become a lonely sport.
"To remain relevant we have to bring a different mindset to our sport."
Purvis also hopes to improve equality in athletics.
"Some of the figures at the recent World championships are quite disturbing with less than five percent of the elite coaches there women.
"How do we as a system bring through more women to coach and coach elite athletes."
-RNZ
