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WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
After London, Winning Edge was introduced. This 10-year
programme was designed to target sports in which Australians
have the best chance of bagging a medal, diverting funds from
sports that do not. The end result, according to sporting expert
Roy Masters “involves handing sports a bucket of money and
placing them in charge of their own destiny”.
Winning Edge put a diverse range of chair people in place
over the main Olympic sports, and divided up around AU$ 300
million proportionally between them. Of course the big hitters
of swimming, rowing, sailing and cycling received close to
$30 million each. At the same time, the Australian Institute of
Sport received a budget cut and ceased to have the oversight
of previous years.
Team sports got 25% of the cash bonanza, which is doled
out according to the potential of each sport. Therefore, the
surprise gold-winner women’s rugby 7s were only gifted $6.9
million.
Another criticism of Winning Edge is that it is not limited to
the Olympics, and oversees the Pan Pacifics, Commonwealth
Games and World Championships. Each sport’s results at each
of these championships is taken into account the next time the
money is allocated, whichmeans perhaps Australian disciplines
are spreading themselves too thinly. Cycling Australia CEO
Nick Green claims that the expectation to perform at the world
championships means that they “need to master an August
peak and we haven’t nailed that yet”.
From the outset, this system must have looked clever and
strategic, but in the end undermines the spirit of sport in
Australia. Divisions in the squad have been cited as a reason
for poor performances, and seem particularly acute between
the swimmers and the rest of the team. Traditionally, the
swimmers have picked up a disproportionate number of the
medals, and there is a sense that they see themselves as a cut
above.
There were rumours of exclusivity and swimmers feeling
entitled to impose their own slogans and mascots on the
entire team.
This argument has been refuted by many close to the team,
and certainly the “toxic” atmosphere of the previous Olympics
has largely been shut down. There was an absence of visible
meltdowns and outright anger this time around.
Broadly speaking, though, a shooter is hardly likely to miss the
target because a swimmer didn’t pass them the water at dinner.
What matters is size. Cutting funding for the AIS is never going
to improve the country’s performance. And Winning Edge has
received plenty of flack.
But Australia’s greatest problem is not that they have suddenly
become bad: the rest of the world has caught up.
Australia invested in sport in a financial and cultural sense,
and this is still the case. But over the last decade, the world
took notice. There has been a brain drain as Aussie coaches
have taken up posts around the world.
So imagine applying Australian sporting know-how to a country
which has five or ten times as many people. China can draw on
1.3 billion people, so by definition they have more talent on
which to draw.
Maybe Australia didn’t get bad. Maybe the rest of the world
just got better.
WHERE TO NOW?
Defenders ofWinning Edge claimthat it is a 10-year programme,
so should be judged in another five years. The transition will
take time. But it would seem that the crucial element in play
is money.
Australians punched at their calculators and spluttered with
horror when they realised that each medal cost the tax-payer
AU$ 8 million. But this actually compares favourably with most
countries around the world. The USA spent over AU$ 1 billion
on their team at the games: so even with their colossal haul of
101, that works out as roughly equivalent to Australia.
Great Britain spent AU$ 600 million: again, this equates to 10
million per medal.
Australia is a small nation with a passion for sport, so basically
these numbers show that you can have as many medals as you
desire: but you have to pay the bill.
Great Britain has enjoyed a new flowering of sporting
prowess after decades of being a global joke. It is
no coincidence that this was based on a massive
injection of cash. Team GB is the beneficiary of
money from the National Lottery, and there is a
push from experts in Australia to
follow this lead.
For better, but mainly for
worse, Australians often
see themselves through the
prism of sport in a global
sense. Maybe this is why
sporting failure hurts so
badly.