Sally McKechnie is quick to point out her experience as a gymnast was fleeting.
“I did gymnastics for about a year when I was nine, in the hall at Rotorua Intermediate School. I’m almost six feet tall – I didn’t even have to jump to reach the uneven bars – so my gymnastics career was very short-lived,” she says.
But that makes the Wellington lawyer and Rhodes Scholar “completely independent of gymnastics” – a prerequisite to leading the steering committee charged with helping to make massive changes to the troubled sport of gymnastics in New Zealand.
McKechnie chairs the nine-strong committee which is still being created. It’s been a long, drawn-out process frustrating many in the sport, but it’s now at the point of shortlisting applicants for the seven spots on the committee. Five of those spots will go to gymnasts, notably survivors and those who’ve experienced harm in the sport.
It will be their job to oversee the implementation of more than 50 recommendations made by an independent review earlier this year into the seriously damaged culture of gymnastics in this country.
“Coming in from the outside was quite deliberate,” McKechnie says.
“I very much see my role as to steer and to guide. These won’t be my ideas coming forward; I’m not the subject matter expert. My role is to challenge ideas and keep us on track to an end point,” she says.
The review was commissioned following compelling media stories highlighting “serious and distressing allegations of abuse” within the sport. That included seven former New Zealand gymnasts coming forward to Stuff alleging serious psychological and physical abuse dating back to the 1990s.
Among the mistreatment revealed was emotional manipulation, body shaming and being forced to compete with serious injuries.
Overseeing the review was the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency David Howman, former Silver Fern Dr Lesley Nicol and former elite gymnast Rachel Vickery.
McKechnie suspects it was Howman who put her name forward for the chair role; they work together on the board of Wellington Cricket. McKechnie is a mum to three young sons – all “cricket-mad” – and says she has a real passion for sport.
In her day job, as a public and administrative lawyer and partner at Simpson Grierson, McKechnie has worked in historic abuse and harm cases. “I have a number of clients involved in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care,” she says. She’s also practised in the rights space.
“There’s a framework that I deal with in my day job that touches on those kinds of issues,” she says.
But what drew her to this role was seeing the wider impact any changes could have on other sports in New Zealand facing similar issues. As well as “a huge degree of empathy and sympathy for young children who are finding themselves in a context where the only really understand what happened to them later,” McKechnie says.
“It’s an opportunity to make, I hope, a really positive difference.”
***
It’s a large and “very ambitious” review, McKechnie acknowledges, with more than 50 recommendations. Bringing those to fruition is a responsibility she says means a lot to her.
“There are a lot of issues around children and women in sport that intersect here,” she says. “There’s a real opportunity to be powerful.”
Among the main issues that require attention are the poor physical and mental wellbeing of gymnasts, the pressure on gymnasts to perform from a young age, and their general lack of a voice; the power imbalance between adult coaches and young gymnasts; poor coaching methods and no support for coaches; and the lack of transparency in competition scoring.
McKechnie wants to ensure whatever changes the steering committee propose to Gymnastics New Zealand are communicated to everyone involved in the sport – even, importantly, the youngest gymnasts.
In 2019, there were 34,600 gymnasts in New Zealand, both competitive and recreational – and 88 percent of the participants were aged 12 or under.
“That’s one of the things we’ll have challenges with – how to safely have conversations on some pretty challenging issues with the young. How do you communicate effectively with an eight-year-old about what they should expect, what this experience should be like for them at eight, and then again at 12?” McKechnie says.
“Making sure ultimately whatever the recommendations are, I’m sure they are going to include targeted education and a type of athletes’ charter suitable for an eight-year-old.
“That’s what I’m thinking about – how do you tell these kids what they should be expecting to happen to them… and that this is not okay. This is how the sport works, this is what’s going to happen… but if this happens, that’s not okay. Even if every other adult in your life is telling you it’s okay, it’s still not okay.
“The fascinating dynamic about this is there’s a lot of complicity – uninformed and enthusiastic complicity – of these kids, until they become old enough to realise that wasn’t in their best interests at the time.”
McKechnie is also determined to involve all of the gymnastics community in the process – especially those who have been sceptical of the committee’s power to make change, when their proposals go back to the Gymnastics NZ board.
“The community have been very clear with us we need to get on with it,” she says. The committee had been expected to be in place in March this year; McKechnie, appointed in September, hopes they’ll hold their first meeting before the end of the year.
“I know we’re asking a lot from a community where some parts are pretty battered, but I want to say to them this is a positive opportunity for change. Hold us accountable at the end, of course – but please come with us in the waka on our journey now, and make this as good as possible.
“If they remain sceptical and don’t engage, we will not achieve for them what they’re hoping. It undercuts the process before it gets off the ground.”
McKechnie believes a sweeping overhaul of gymnastics will benefit other sports and ultimately New Zealand society.
“I think this role and this committee have a huge opportunity to move gymnastics forward. But there’s also a wider conversation about sport in New Zealand and children in New Zealand that this is part of,” she says.
“Many of the challenges are beyond the scope of the gymnastic community to solve themselves, but if they are the burning platform for a wider conversation, that’s really powerful.”
***
McKechnie played water polo and netball growing up in Rotorua and at high school in Auckland.
“I have no small-ball hand-eye coordination,” she says. “But I’m a massive cricket tragic.” (Incidentally, she’s no relation to former Black Cap and All Black Brian McKechnie).
Armed with an arts degree in history and an honours degree in law, McKechnie applied for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in 2000. “My ‘sport’ for the scholarship was debating,” she says.
But once she was there studying civil law and a Master’s of international relations and affairs, McKechnie took up rowing.
“Girls weren’t really rowing in schools when I left New Zealand, but at Oxford, all first-years essentially give rowing a go. I loved it,” she says.
When she returned to Wellington to work for Crown Law, initially on Treaty of Waitangi issues, she rowed on the harbour for a year. “But quelle surprise! Rowing and a fulltime job didn’t mix,” she says.
“But I have a rowing machine at home, and my erg time is still better than my 12-year-old’s.”
“My expectation of this committee is that this will be a very respectful environment, but it will be a robust one where ideas are tested.”
McKechnie joined Simpson Grierson in 2017 to start a government public law practice in Wellington. “Now I do a lot of work for private actors in terms of historic harm issues,” she says.
“I’m very engaged in the complexity of the issues with how to respond to predominantly more historic harm than what is happening in gymnastics,” she says. “How to deal with those issues, what are the different options, how it works – I spend a lot of time thinking about this.”
***
Five members of the steering committee will be gymnasts – “notably survivors and those with lived experience of harm”. It was originally four, but Gymnastics NZ agreed to relinquish its spot on the committee.
Other members will be a human rights specialist, a child and youth specialist, and a representative from Sport NZ.
McKenzie says there’s been a strong response from gymnasts and the challenge now is to get the right mix of experience, gender, codes and geography.
Gymnasts must be at least 18 years old, because of the time commitment required by the committee over 15 months. “We anticipate it will be during school time,” McKechnie says.
A number of young people applied for the roles, or attended six hui to give feedback to McKechnie and the appointments panel (led by former Black Sticks Olympian Dr Shane Collins). McKechnie stresses whether they’re on the board or not, she still wants those gymnasts’ involvement to help steer changes in the sport.
She’s aware that for some gymnasts subjected to harm, their experiences may still be “too raw” to sit at the table.
“My expectation of this committee is that this will be a very respectful environment, but it will be a robust one where ideas are tested. We need to change things – we can’t carry on with the status quo. So some of this conversation will be quite challenging,” she says.
“[Committee members] will need to transcend their own specific experience, which is very hard. If that’s not something they’re able to do, there will be other ways the committee will be communicating with those parts of the gymnastics community, that doesn’t require them to sit at this table.
“Some people see themselves as survivors, and there’s power for them in claiming that label. With others, it’s the exact opposite – they see that label as disempowering or alienating. To try to capture the reality, we’ve had to be flexible with the language, because we don’t want to alienate those who see it as being a sense of their identity and strength, nor to alienate those who suffered harm but don’t see themselves in that group.”
McKechnie says she’s interested in uncovering what barriers have stopped people in the sport coming forward in the past: “Understanding the barriers of age, gender and power – those things are as important as understanding the harm.”
She also wants to see how the rest of the gymnastics world might be able to help New Zealand.
“This is a global issue in gymnastics. And this is a little sporting organisation in a relatively minor gymnastics country, so how can we interact with the international organisations?” she says. “I’m very keen that we access all the lessons that are being learned in bigger countries with more resources. Who are doing things we would support?
“How can we do the best job we can here to change the sport in the ways that David [Howman] has identified – and many have identified – need to happen? And within the limits of human capacity and budget, financial and human, of a relatively small sport in New Zealand?”
