Champion Olympic rower Eric Murray says a report into Cycling New Zealand should be applied to all of the country's elite sporting competitors.
The damning independent report was commissioned following the death of up-and-coming track cycling star Olivia Podmore and has made all elite athletes reflect on the true cost of winning gold medals.
Uncovered in the report was a culture of bullying and intimidation where athletes were afraid to mess up, and where medals were more important than wellbeing.
Murray was a close friend of 24-year-old Podmore and had a warning for parents who want their children to follow in his gold medal-winning footsteps.
"One of the things that you've got to weigh up is that high-performance sport is taking government funding to get medals, so there's a very fine balance between, 'is it more important to have the medals or is it more important to have the participation?'
"Do we want to have happy athletes who just go around and compete or do we want to have the balance between, 'we want happy athletes competing but also achieving on the international stage?'
"With the kids coming through, and for parents, I feel like there needs to be the maturity and there need to be the steps in place. So, yes, I do believe that sport at a young level needs to be about participation," Murray told The Project.
He said as children age and mature, that's when they can start asking themselves whether they want to go to the next level.
"If that's the case, I do feel like we push people too fast - so kids come out of school at 17-18 straight to programmes.
"I feel like the age thing has been the issue where we've pushed people too fast, too early when they don't have the maturity or the understanding - the resilience."
Murray hoped a funding model would be implemented to nurture the long-term well-being of athletes.
"I think we need… a sports system that's really going to look quite a way in the future, not just really short term," he said. "If we get that we're able to nurture people along the way; have that mental health and wellbeing… to get those gold medals in the future."
