Frustrated kiwi javelin thrower Tori Peeters has joined omitted sprinters Zoe Hobbs and Eddie Osei Nketia in questioning the NZOC's selection process for Tokyo.
Peeters should have been packing up for her first Olympic Games this week but instead, she told 1 NEWS she is off on an overdue holiday.
“It was a pretty big dream of mine, something that I wished I could be at,” Peeters said.
The 27-year-old javelin thrower was actually named in the NZ Tokyo Athletics team back in April when she was over competing in Australia at the time and the announcement came as a surprise.
"I'm fielding thousands of messages from friends, family congratulating me on being selected but them having not quite read the fine print of the extra condition."
Despite being ranked in the top 32 females in the world and having earned a spot at Tokyo's Games, the NZOC wanted her to throw close to her personal best before confirming her place in the team.
Therefore, despite being just months out from the Olympics, Peeters self-funded a last-minute trip to Australia to appease their concerns.
While there, she beat current Commonwealth Games champion Kathryn Mitchell from Australia but fell short of 62 metres - a distance she threw just last year in the build-up to the cancelled event.
As a result, the NZOC left her off their list.
“We're a minority sport as it is so how are we supposed to grow it if the athletes that are actually able to be there aren't?”
The NZOC has long-required athletes to prove they can be top 16 contenders – a condition CEO Kereyn Smith defended.
“We're a small country with big ambition and we have to have some parameters for selection,” Smith told 1 NEWS.
For Peeters, ranking wasn't enough but on the other hand, double Olympic medallist Nick Willis managed to scrape in on his ranking despite not having made the Tokyo qualification time in the 1500 metres.
For sprinters Hobbs and Osei-Nkitea, both used social media to vent their frustration at missing selection.
“Qualifying to the games is one thing but qualifying and your NOC still doesn’t send you, that really hurts, man,” Ose-Nketia said.
“Meanwhile other athletes from other countries get to go to the Games. Its sucks and it’s unfair but it is what it is.
“Putting in so much time, sweat, tears and blood into this game just so you can one day represent the country that the country deserve instead gets declined.”
Peeters said she thought long and hard before speaking out but this is a sport she loves.
Even after missing the cut, she went back to the gym to train with her Olympic teammates and kept her emotions in check for a painful farewell.
She's refusing to say goodbye to her Olympic dream though - just yet.
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