Australia’s Olympic chief has slammed a report commissioned by the government that criticizes the country’s obsession with medal counts.
The independent review, released yesterday, said the focus on winning Olympic medals was hurting participation rates and diverting badly needed funding from grass-roots sports.
The review also rejected calls by the Australian Olympic Committee for even more funding to maintain the country’s top-five standing in the medal count at the 2012 London Games, saying the government should give priority to popular sports like cricket, golf and soccer.
“The panel does not believe that the medal count is an appropriate measure of Australian performance or that ‘Top Five’ is a sensible target,” the report said. “The Panel’s judgement, after hearing all of the submissions and looking at the data, is that if another A$100 million [US$93.63 million] per year is invested in sport it would better directed to other priorities.”
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) had requested an extra A$100 million for each of the next three years, on top of the current A$140 million budget, to arrest a potential slide down the medal standings.
AOC chairman John Coates described the report’s assertion that funding was biased toward elite sport as “nonsense” and said its authors were not qualified to make recommendations.
“I think you’ll find Australians are immensely proud of our Olympic athletes and Olympic record,” Coates said.
The report, prepared by an independent panel led by businessman David Crawford, called for a debate about “which sports carry the national ethos” amid rising healthcare costs stemming from lifestyle diseases like obesity.
“Swimming, tennis, cricket, cycling, the football codes, netball, golf, hockey, basketball, surfing and surf lifesaving are among the most popular sports in Australia, a part of the national psyche,” it said. “If we are truly interested in a preventative health agenda through sport, then much of it may be better spent on lifetime participants than almost all on a small group of elite athletes who will perform at that level for just a few years.”
Coates said the report’s recommendations would mean the exclusion of fringe sports.
“Is he [Crawford] telling us that the gold medals won by the rowers and sailors in Beijing count for nothing?” Coates said. “The message I get from Crawford is that they’re going to look at participation, and on that basis, some of our small sports, lower profile sports that have provided Olympic heroes in the past, I think they would be in the gun.”
Australia won 46 medals at last year’s Olympics to finish fifth in overall medals. The AOC said it would need 55 medals at London to maintain its top-five position.
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