Melbourne: Australia's Olympic chief has criticised a government-commissioned report that dismissed calls for extra funding for elite sports, saying its recommendations would harm fringe sports and slash the country's medal counts.
The independent report released on Tuesday, touted by the government as the biggest review of Australia's sports policy in more than a decade, said the country's obsession with medal counts was hurting participation rates and diverting badly needed funding from grassroots sports.
Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) chief John Coates described the report's assertions 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. Olympians have inspired this nation for decades," Coates told reporters.
The AOC had requested an extra A$100 million (USD 93.63 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.
But the review, which advocated holding elite sports funding at current levels, said the government should give the priority to popular sports with higher participation levels.
It called for more funding for grassroots and community sports development and infrastructure, amid rising healthcare costs from lifestyle diseases like obesity.
"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, referring to the AOC's goal for Australia's medal standing at the 2012 London Games.
"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 if the report's recommendations were followed it would mean the exclusion of fringe sports, already unable to draw funds through gate receipts or broadcast rights revenues, from the public purse.
"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 in Beijing, including 14 golds, to finish fifth on the overall medals table and sixth for golds. The AOC believes it will need 55 medals at London to maintain its top-five position.
Australia's cricket and football code organisations hailed the report as timely, but former Olympic athletes condemned its findings.
"Surely the funding of our sporting success should be judged on need and quite clearly the football codes are more than flushed with funds and the Olympic sports are not," Olympic swimming great Kieren Perkins told Australian media.
The Australian government is expected to respond to the report early next year.
Bureau Report
First Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 23:40