Women unite to tell the truth about Olivia Podmore. Video: RNZ

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Watch Women unite to tell the truth about Olivia Podmore. Video: RNZ - Allied Press on Dailymotion

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00:00She was just the most vivacious, amazing, beautiful, loud, funny, magnetic person I

00:10guess that you could possibly imagine. I don't know anyone that didn't love her.

00:15Anyone she came across just adored her. Liv was no angel. Liv was a early 20s

00:22females pushing boundaries wherever she could. She was just one of those kind of

00:26infectious personalities. And it was when you started seeing that fading away that

00:31you realised there was something deeper wrong. When Olivia Podmore died in a

00:37suspected suicide in August 2021, two women vowed to expose the deep wrongs the Olympic

00:43sprint cyclist had endured. Despite participating in two major inquiries held by Cycling New Zealand,

00:49Nicole Bailey and Jess Massey say it wasn't until the recent coronial inquest that they felt the

00:55full reality of what Podmore experienced was brought to light.

01:00People tried before but the circumstances meant that the facts which were brought forward and

01:08the realities were watered down and minimised or hidden. For me it's been really critical this time

01:16that all of those things can be brought out into the open and addressed fully and properly

01:21understood so yeah there isn't another Liv ever. Nicole Bailey is the ex-wife of the coach who

01:32relentlessly bullied Podmore for nearly two years in the Cycling New Zealand program. In giving evidence

01:37to the coronial inquiry, Bailey chose to have her name made public even though her ex-husband's

01:43identity will remain a secret. I chose not to have name suppression even though previously I had tried to

01:52keep myself out of the limelight as such um was because this is bigger than me now and in previous years

02:06I felt like I would be able to be pushed aside anything I had to say wouldn't carry any weight

02:14because I would always be pitched as the bitter ex-wife or something like that which couldn't be

02:19further from the truth and I thought if I went for name suppression this time anything that I'm asked

02:25will be able to be boxed up and put away a lot easier than if my name's attached to it. So I thought it

02:32would be more useful for Liv for her legacy to to not hide anymore. Podmore was only 19 and about to

02:41make her Olympic debut when she unwittingly exposed an affair between a coach and another athlete in

02:47the squad. That led to the bullying and emotional abuse before the young rider ultimately blew the

02:53whistle on the coach. Jess Massey a former team manager at Cycling New Zealand fought alongside Podmore to

02:59expose the sport's failure to keep athletes safe. And it feels hard to say because as traumatic as

03:05everything that happened to Liv and the coronial inquiry was I actually found the process complete

03:12really validating and somewhat cathartic because it felt like I had been raising these issues for 10

03:17years and they'd been marginalised and manipulated into other words or issues and therefore they'd always

03:23lost their impact whereas it was the first time in 10 years in a whole decade that I felt I could stand

03:28up as an independent human not as a team manager not as anything else and actually my words and my

03:35recollections held some weight which I don't believe we ever had going through those review processes.

03:43During the inquest an independent expert witness zeroed in on Podmore's role as a whistleblower

03:49and the impact it had on her mental well-being. Massey says she's also paid the price for speaking up.

03:55For both Liv and I for the four years post the reviews we definitely felt tarnished by this

04:02whistleblower thing whether we were named in reports or not it was pretty easy to work out

04:07who said what and how. I think I professionally got pushed sideways. The moment I started speaking up

04:14around anyone senior or any senior leadership decisions or if I had a differing view to coaching

04:26network or the way high performance sport New Zealand was handling something I wasn't heard or

04:31listened to or asked to form formalise it at all I was marginalised and made to think it was my problem.

04:38Giving evidence at the inquest has again taken an emotional toll on both Massey and Bailey but

04:44they're doing so in the hope important changes will be made so that other elite New Zealand athletes

04:50won't suffer like Podmore did. Nothing we can do can bring Liv back but the one thing we can do is

04:57make sure that Liv's legacy counts for something and it's one of the reasons that I've stayed involved.

05:02All we want to do is make things better for future generations that come through organisations like

05:07this and sport sports are a good thing and have hugely passionate people and really good people

05:15but without the systems and processes in place to hold people to account and make sure that that

05:20moral compass doesn't slip in pursuit of performance then we're always going to end up in this scenario.

05:27Sitting in court and listening to what has been said from the parties that have been present

05:36it's definitely out in the open now what changes need to be made and I think the coroner has

05:43an amazing amount of work here to be able to collate all of that and make it make sense

05:49and to be something that's actionable. I would like to think that that change will eventuate because

05:55I hate to think that Liv's gone for no reason.

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