The institute was established in 2000 by a group of friends and enthusiasts, Snell, the three-time Olympic gold medallist.

 

Others included Colin, a former international athlete and the Mayor of Auckland from 1980 to 1983, and Allison Roe, a former winner of the New York City Marathon.

 

Its goal was to help identify and develop those who might become world class athletes in Olympic and Commonwealth Games sports.

 

The decision to shut it down comes only six months after Vili became New Zealand's first Olympic track and field champion since John Walker won the 1500 metres at Montreal in 1976 and Nick Willis, another athlete they helped, claimed a bronze medal in the 1500m.

 

Another athlete on its books, Marina Erakovic, made the top 50 in the world women's tennis rankings last year.

 

The closure has saddened Snell, arguably New Zealand's greatest athlete having won the 800m at the Tokyo Olympics in 1960 and the 800m and 1500m double in Rome four years later.

 

Snell, who also set a world record for the mile during his career, now works at the University of Texas.

 

He said: "Its closure is disappointing because a lot of us made a lot of effort to support the institute."

 

Snell strongly identified with the institute's talent identification operation.

 

He said: "That was all anchored in my own experience - at 17, I was third-ranked in the 880 yards and mile at Mount Albert Grammar School but four years later, I won Olympic gold.

 

"My belief was I didn't know I had the talent for running but with the right sort of testing and evaluation of physical abilities, it could have been spotted - it was only chance circumstances that made my career possible.

 

"My thought was that there are probably a lot of kids around that had talent but didn't know it.

 

"I am proud of the institute's work - I am not going to claim we made [sports] careers possible but we did help along the way.

 

"It is all about funding and being able to secure that - the current economic times made it even more difficult to contribute and a few of us were getting burned out by the fund-raising dinners."

 

Garth Gilmour, a trustee, said the institute had over-extended itself at the beginning of the downturn of financial support and had been unable to tap into new sources.

 

It had tried to expand too quickly, aiming at funding up to 190 sportspeople.

 

At about NZ$3,000 (£1,057) each annually, that proved too much to find.

 

Gilmour admitted that 20 to 30 would have been a more realistic number,.

 

He said: "It is a pity because we had just acquired new equipment to carry out the talent identification programme on a wider scale but we were piled up with debts unfortunately and covering the debt was impossible."