Australia’s refugee problem has attracted global attention. This from the New York Times.
What do you want? Gold medals or schools, hospitals …
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The British onslaught at Laoshan Velodrome in the past week — seven gold medals from 10 cycling events — has caused not so much a ripple of concern at Australian Olympic Committee headquarters as a tsunami. The extraordinary haul has vaulted the British into third place on the medal table with 16 gold — and the likelihood of more to come in track and field — while Australia sits in equal fourth place on 11 gold, and only dim prospects of adding to that tally. Pre-meet AOC predictions of 44 medals are now beginning to look seriously overblown. The Australian team was becalmed for most of day 11 yesterday. There were no lilting strains of Advance Australia Fair, just the growing reality that we were heading for our worst Olympic medal tally since the Barcelona Games in 1992. So the scene has been set for London 2012, with Britain in the ascendancy and brimming with confidence, and the usually cocky Australians looking slightly deflated and down-in-the-mouth. The pooh-bahs at the AOC don’t like what they’re seeing. As a result, the bleating has begun for more funding. First, AOC chief John Coates got in with his four-yearly appeal for greater government help. The baton was picked up this week by head swimming coach Alan Thompson who ramped up the campaign with an emotive plea. “We are on the verge of a crisis in Australian sport if we don’t get any help,” he said. Every four years, we get a vicarious thrill when a Stephanie Rice wins gold in the pool or a Sally McLellan takes out an unexpected silver on the track. And we all sneak a peek at the medal table during Games fortnight and take special pride in Australia’s ability to mix it with the heavy-hitters. But the feeling is only fleeting, and it is only every four years. And then we get on with our lives. I wonder, if the issue was put to a national poll, whether Australians would prefer to have a greater proportion of their taxes directed towards the Australian Institute of Sport and the possibility of winning perhaps 10 more medals in London or towards addressing more pressing social concerns, such as health and education and welfare. Besides, blaming a lack of funding for below-par performances is too easy and too convenient. “We didn’t win gold because we weren’t given enough financial help from the government’”. Or “Britain did better because they got more money”. That’s a cop-out, as any athlete from the poorer African nations will tell you. You can’t just pour money into one end of the great Olympic training machine and, four years later, wait at the other end and expect a swag of gold medals to be spat out. Sport doesn’t work like that, or it shouldn’t. What about hard work, dedication and talent, the usual staples of Olympic success? Percy Cerutty famously took Herb Elliott to the Portsea back beach for training before he won his 1500m gold medal at Rome in 1960. Elliott would sprint up the sand dunes until he dropped. “Faster,” said Cerutty, “it’s only pain.” Sally McLellan’s mother, Anne, was forced to work two jobs to fund her daughter’s career, and her own trip to Beijing. They’re often the sort of sacrifices that have to be made to produce an Olympic medallist. The Australian Sports Commission is the body that distributes government money to sport. Its budget of about $250 million a year is divided among 68 sports, including 28 Olympic sports. Those Olympic sports received more than $63 million last financial year, with $60 million channelled into preparing athletes for Beijing. Sports Minister Kate Ellis will now find herself in an invidious position. She will be relentlessly pressured and lobbied for more funding by Coates, Thompson and every other Olympic coach. At the same time, she will have to try to convince Cabinet that more Olympic medals are really a priority as the economy toys with the idea of dipping into recession. |
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15 Comments
Sure, we all like to win some gold and if we are good enough it will happen. What about pouring more money into schools and small sporting groups and get more youngsters into sport and recreation and that would help to make a healthier nation, and attack the obesity problem that we see around us. That would open up more opportunities to develop future champions but more importantly more contestants but not necessarily champions. We don’t have to be the leaders in the ‘gold rush’.
I agree with introduction of a HECS -style scheme for athletes. It could be called the Sports Education Contribution Scheme (SECS - use the phonetic).
An athlete would be SECSed-UP if they were successful in making money out of his/her tax-payer funded sporting education. Once a set level of money was returned to taxpayers they could be DE-SECSed.
Ultimately such a scheme would make the athletic programs self-funding !
Another alternative would be to have a no-holds barred Olympics (let the athletes take whatever drugs they want). We would get a lot more world records, would have a circus side-show before each event (bendy-man, bearded lady etc) and drug companies could sponsor athletes - thereby solving funding dilemma.
back to solving gobal warming now.
Maybe Thorpey can throw in a couple of bucks - or Stephanie Whatshername can donate a percentage of the take from her future yogurt/tinned fruit/weeties commercials.
I think our success in sport encourages healthy lifestyles, but this is on the decline as increasingly our success in sport encourages couch-potato sports viewing. Widescreen killed our Olympics hopes!
It will take more that $250M to fix health or education - the comparison is naive!
Didn’t I say something similar, if more barbed, yesterday in Ratings comments?
I agree with DaveM, China and the Uk’s success has been because of the amount of money pumped into their sporting programs. i think the money needs to spent. We are a nation pride who ourselves on our sporting prowess. What happens when we are no good?
As Marcus says “… so just as it is reasonable for taxpayers to fund the arts and community programs, it’s not unreasonable to continue to fund sport.” And, just as my kids will have to pay HECS when (and if) they finally get their dream arts job after uni, so should all our sporting ‘heroes’.
Maybe we should consider some sort of HECS arrangement at the AIS ?
Athletes could be required to pay back a certain percentage of their sponsorship income and prize winnings to repay their HECS-AIS debt.
We could attach nominal income figures to Olympic medals, Gold $100,000, silver $50,000 and Bronze $25,000 for example.
Steve.
This topic was the subject of discussion on 702 ABC Syndey morning show prior to the Olympics, Chairman Coates was pratling on about not enough hundreds of millions going to sport and about national pride - what a load of rubbish! All but one caller rightly pointed out that the millions spent on medals mainly accrue a huge benefit on the winner of said medals, indeed celebrity spruiker Max Markson was banging on about the hundred of thousands and millions that “our” gold medalists will earn in sponsorships on channel 9 the other day. Get real AOC think about what’s really important in life rather than the self agrandising luxury at someone elses expense that the Olympics movement is famous for…give the money to education, health or charity.
Frankly I think a lot more of taxpayer money is wasted on other projects such as detention centres, baby bonuses and government advisers than on sport. The AIS is not a bottomless pit, sucking in money and producing the odd gold medal out the other side. It is itself a training ground and a model for sports administrators, coaching and technical staff, one that has been replicated by most of the other wealthy countries (including the UK and China). Have a look at how many Australians are coaching overseas (for example the US field hockey program is largely run by Australians). The AIS is as much a higher education institution as any university.
As far as ‘holding a job and training in their spare time’, again, I’ll use the hockey for an example. Almost all the players in the kookaburras and hockeyroos squads are not professional players - in fact most of them turn down professional contracts in Europe to be able to represent Australia. With the exception of the last six months leading up to the Olympics, where they have full time scholarships, most of them have have to fit training in around work and study commitments, sacrificing holidays to play in international tournaments. It’s not just the hockey though. The rowers, swimmers, judo players, kayakers - these are successful athletes who act in a professional way and make huge sacrifices to represent their country. Unlike rugby, AFL, tennis, soccer and cycling, very few Olympic athletes reap significant financial rewards from their acheivements, so just as it is reasonable for taxpayers to fund the arts and community programs, it’s not unreasonable to continue to fund sport. This doesn’t mean a never ending stream of cash, but some acknowledgement of what it takes to compete at the highest level, as well as the benefits that we get from seeing our countrymen successful on the world stage. Sporting success is not just a simple function of money, but lack of money can certainly limit opportunity.
There is now a lot of conjecture around what a gold medal is “worth” to an athlete - sponsorships, appearance fees, establishing sports consultancies in their twilight years off the back of the medal etc. In any other industry, the “education” component (in sports it would be AIS coaching), is a cost that is outlayed by the individual based on their assessment of their potential future earning capacity. With sports, there is also the element of risk (I might pull hammie!), so there gambling plays a role as well. On that basis, shouldn’t the athlete concerned pay for all of their costs? Or pay back those costs as part of their future earnings? Face it - The Olympics is a business - one thats makes a small number of people very, very rich. I’m glad many of the individuals representing Australia are doing quite well, however the idea posited that nations that invest more money get more medals and therefore bragging rights at the other end, simply proves that this is not about sport, but business and nationalism. Maybe we need a science olympics with medal count, so we can get some additional investment in some more important areas that will actually contribute to peoples quality of life….
You only have to look at the poor African nations to know that a healthy national psyche needs heros and the nation will happly will forgo many things for that priveledge. The Chinese sense they will be going without for the priveledge. The point is how many medals is enough. The sports industry would never have enough as their interest is mixed in with commercial profits. This sports money is not remotely going to fix the social government departments either.
I find the balance appealing where the government can match the raw desire of Sally and her mother with just enough funds to allow them to achive their and the nations aspirations on an international money hungry competitive stage. We cannot change Sally (neither should we) and we cannot change the olympics (although it would be nice to).
Australia has a per capita medals tally higher than any nation on the planet. That’s a wonderful achievement and one that defines us. We should aim at keeping it.
Indeed…the tenor of this article reflects my own…it is no longer sport….it is how much money you put into the sausage factory that is AIS…and wait for the heroes to come out the other end.
China and UK success?….a function of money.
It does not reflect any sporting ethos that used to be found in Australia in days gone by…. where a local heroes held a job and trained in their spare time.
So times change….the question is now relevant….money for things that matter….or the sausage machine?
As a fan of the sport of cycling, I’m personally delighted at the changing face of Australian cycling over the past 25 years. Our cyclists perform on the world stage like never before - in professional road racing. The single cost of this achievement has been in the gold medal stakes at recent Olympics, particularly on the track. No biggie, at least as far as this individual fan’s opinion is concerned.