Without being able to book MIQ spots if they travel overseas for competitions, some of New Zealand's top athletes are being forced to rethink their career paths.
Surfer Paige Hareb sits in a tube during the 2018 Founders Cup in California. Photo: Photosport/WSL
This comes after the wife of multi-sport athlete Braden Currie, who is stuck in Europe for at least seven more weeks after travelling abroad for a competition, has voiced her concerns over the inequality in the MIQ system.
Sally Currie wrote an open letter to Sports Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson asking for the MIQ process to be changed.
But Braden Currie is not the only one who's having to choose between their home and their career.
Paige Hareb has been a professional surfer for 13 years. It's a job that she loves.
But once the pandemic hit, she was faced with the agonising choice of staying in New Zealand with no career nor income, or continuing to compete in overseas events and risk getting stuck abroad for unknown periods of time.
Although some athletes have taken the latter option - while praying they manage to secure a spot in MIQ - for Hareb the risk was just too great.
She made the decision to pull out of the World Surf League Challenger Series, which starts in California this month.
"It's probably the biggest decision of my career. I was going back and forth on whether to go or not for close to over a month and towards the end of it, it was doing my head in a bit.
"It's my career and my job. That's my main source of income. It's a pretty harsh reality to say no to that in the end.
"I just decided better to be safe than sorry and I just hope that it is the right decision or I just have to make it the right decision now"
Hareb said she found it impossible to book a spot in MIQ, having spent countless hours on the website and enlisting the help of her family.
"I'd been looking at the competitions I wanted to do for months. I'd tried quite a few times and days just sitting on the computer and spots would come up and I even tried just with spots that, like the dates, weren't going to work for me, but I just tried to see if I could be quick enough and I wasn't."
Over the past year or so Hareb has lost sponsorship deals as well as any money she would have made from competitions abroad.
She said the dilemma had taken its toll on her mental health.
"I think either way it was going to be tricky on my mental health. Even just staying at home even though I'm safe and healthy. Just the unknown of when I can actually get back to my job and career and the fact that it might not happen and I might have to choose a new pathway is definitely pretty unsettling.
"I'm just trying to take it each day as it comes and then hopefully it will all work out."
Hareb has been staying in touch with fellow surfer Billy Stairmand, who took the risk of travelling abroad to compete, even though he has not secured an MIQ spot.
"Right up until my decision not to go, we were messaging just about every day wondering what to do and he almost pulled out as well I think, but he actually made a fundraiser for people who help him go. Once he started that, he said he felt bad if he did pull out, he was almost in a trickier position and just feels like he has to go.
"He's leaving his wife at home as well. I don't think he's 100 percent sure about it, but yeah, that's what he's doing."
For now, Hareb is taking a break from her sport but is hoping to be back in the water competing next year.
If all else fails, she's got a back-up plan.
"I'm still just relying on my sponsors. I've got one contest at the end of next month that hopefully, I can win a little bit of prize money as well.
"I'm actually currently trying to finish my real estate papers, so maybe go into that to start with and see what happens."
Minister of Sport and Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson told First Up he appreciated how hard it was for athletes whose jobs required them to travel.
He says it was harder for individuals to book MIQ spots than it was for larger groups like our Olympians or Paralympians.
"We've got a lot of New Zealanders who want to come back here for reasons to do with their families, we've got businesses who need critical workers coming in like the RSE workers, we have to find a balance here.
"But I'm certainly going to keep advocating for these individual sportspeople because I know it's tough on them."
Sport NZ chief executive Raelene Castle declined to comment on the issue.
