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mark_pilkingtonFor those of you still interested in the Olympics from an Australian perspective (or at least mine) and here is an update of the situation described above of the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) sitting on $100M and blaming the less than expected Australian Olympic result on a lack of government funding even though its at record levels!! (these people are living in a fools paradise!)
heres some more of the story unfolding.
IT was the meeting where Australia’s Olympic boss John Coates laid bare his views on winning medals, public money for sport and the fate that awaited any government which denied him either.
Three months after the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, where Australia had performed extraordinarily well to finish sixth on the medal tally behind much larger nations, Coates came face to face with the four members of a government-commissioned panel charged with conducting a review of Australian sport. The setting was a non-descript Sydney office belonging to the Department of Health. The mood was tense.
Coates said Australia’s goal for the London Games was to win 55 medals, that anything less would be seen as failure and that Olympic sports needed more money to achieve this goal. Sam Mostyn, a company director prominent in sports administration as an AFL commissioner, asked Coates whether there was any limit on what Australia should be prepared to do to maintain its place in the Olympic pecking order.
The president of the Australian Olympic Committee prickled at the question. Of course there was no limit. He went further. No Australian prime minister wanted to be the national leader who had to explain why our athletes were winning fewer medals, Coates said. Any government that tried to reduce funding for Olympic sports would be reminded of the disaster of Montreal.
Coates made one further remark which stuck in the minds of the panel members who would subsequently produce the 357-page Crawford report. The AOC was answerable to no government in Australia. Its sole master was the Olympic movement.
A year later, when the Crawford report was published, it provoked a savage response. Coates publicly accused its authors of insulting Australian Olympians, returning to the “White Australia days” by promoting Anglo-centric sports and condemning to mediocrity our performance at future Games.
He accused the sports minister who released the report, Kate Ellis, of vacating the subsequent debate, while praising Kevin Rudd as a prime minister who understood the Games and the importance of sports performance to Australia’s international standing. Behind the scenes, AOC lawyers filed Freedom of Information requests investigating the way the panel had been appointed and possible conflicts of interests by David Crawford, a retired company director and chairman who had established the governance model for the AFL, Football Federation Australia and Cricket Australia, and his fellow panel members; Mostyn, former Hockey Australia president and Australian Sports Commission director Pam Tye and Colin Carter, a business consultant and former AFL commissioner.
The panel members received legal letters from the AOC suggesting their findings and public comments had damaged the reputation of the Olympic movement. Gemba, an independent sports consultancy commissioned to provide data to the Crawford panel, was also subject to AOC legal action.
Coates this week declined to answer questions from The Weekend Australian about the AOC’s campaign against the Crawford report. An AOC spokesman said it was “premature” to draw implications from the London medal count.
The Crawford panel’s suggestion that Australia should set “realistic” medal targets at Olympics, rather than the top-five medal tally place Coates cited in demanding an extra $109 million a year in taxpayer money for sport, prompted a withering reply from Coates. “We were fourth in Sydney, we were fourth in Athens, sixth in Beijing.” he said at the release of the report. “Now that he is telling us that eighth is good enough, maybe 10th will satisfy Mr Crawford?”
Coates may have to settle for a place well below that, if Australia’s position on the medal tally at the midpoint of the London Olympics is any guide. Last night, Australia was in 16th place. At the corresponding point of the Sydney, Athens and Beijing Olympics, Australia was placed second, fourth and seventh.
Crawford’s point was not about medal tallies and where Australia should rank against other nations at the Games. Rather, the report argued medal counts were a dubious measure of what a modern nation should aim to get out of sport. It advocated a shift in funding bias away from the Olympics and towards the sports most Australians play and identify with, and a greater emphasis on participation and less on elite performance.
What Coates saw as a threat to Australia’s global sporting prestige now reads as a sensible, sober reflection on the events of this week. Peter Bartels, a former chairman of the Australian Sports Commission, yesterday urged the federal government to revisit Crawford’s findings in London’s wake. “It certainly needs to be reassessed in light of what has happened since it was delivered,” he told The Weekend Australia.
Bartels says it is the ASC, rather than the AOC, that is responsible for public funding and performance of Australian athletes and a lack of leadership within the organisation since Beijing has cruelled its ability to perform this role. Since Bartels stood down four years ago after 10 years as chairman, the ASC has had a chairman, two acting chairmen and three chief executives. “That is not a good basis for stability,” he says.
He believes tough decisions need to be made about the funding of future Olympic teams, arguing the Australian Institute of Sport is warehousing too many established athletes with no medal prospects and the money would be better spent discovering and developing younger talent.
“We need to sharpen the focus of the AIS,” he says. “We need a heavy cull and funds redirected towards talent identification, sports potential and coaching. The future needs more strategic direction, not necessarily more money.”
As an aside, the former national track cyclist also had a message for any Olympians who saw their place at the Games, and even medals, as an entitlement. “I am disturbed at the the demeanour of a number of athletes representing Australia,” he says. “The outstanding role model for me at the moment in international sport is Bradley Wiggins. He is understated, he is overachieving and he is not asking anybody for much. He has got a degree of humility about him.”
Former Athletics Australia chief executive Danny Corcoran, one of the few senior Olympic sport administrators prepared to endorse the Crawford report at the time it was released, yesterday backed Bartels’ call for government to reconsider it and devote more attention to supporting coaches and junior athletes.
Coates won the initial battle against the Crawford report. The government did not champion the report or its findings and after a fierce, six-month lobbying campaign, the AOC secured a further $195m over four years out of the 2010 federal budget. The low-hanging fruit within Crawford’s recommendations was picked by Ellis and her successor Mark Arbib. The most difficult and important reforms to Australia’s sporting system — spilling all positions at the ASC and divesting its control over the AIS and state-based sports institutes — were shelved.
More significantly for Coates, the primacy of the Olympics remains unchanged.
Federal Sport Minister Kate Lundy agrees the Crawford report should be reconsidered as part of the post-London assessment of Australia’s elite sports performance, along with any lessons that can be learned from how comparable nations fund their sport.
Speaking to The Weekend Australian from London, the former rower says a strength of the Crawford report is its focus on grassroots sport and participation. She believes a weakness in the report is the lack of weight it attached to the role of the Olympics and other major championships in motivating participation in sport and shaping our national identity.
“The only part of the equation that I don’t think emerged in the Crawford report was how we project ourselves internationally on things like the medal count,” Lundy says. “Because it is the thing that everyone quantifies, it does become a test of a nation’s sporting prowess, whether we like it or not. For Australia, it is not just how that inspires people to play sport. It is how we look out into the world and what opportunities are derived from that.”
Lundy says there will be no “panicked response” if Australia finishes these Olympics well down the medal tally. Nor will it be a surprise if the AOC cites poor performance to demand more public money for Olympic sports.
“We have led the way and punched above our weight with commonwealth investment in the Australian Institute of Sport,” she says. “We have now seen other countries catch up and the task I have before me is where do we next innovate? It is not just about more money in a system that is not doing very much.
“I would expect that the AOC would always ask for more money. They have made that very clear over many, many decades. What I am interested in is a system that actually achieves results.”
Mr Coates and the AOC have not been getting much support at all for his demands for more money!!, and now he is putting in a gold medal performance in back pedalling!!!
The finger-pointing has started. Coates blames the swim team and applauds a review led by former head coach Bill Sweetenham and retired swimming legend Susie O’Neill.
“We are disappointed in the totality (of medals won), but you have to break it down and that identifies, principally, swimming,” he said. “If swimming was 20 but not 15 (medals) and they had won the four gold we did last time, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
(Australia didn’t claim 15 medals but 10 in the pool at these Games).
Kevan Gosper, Australia’s senior representative on the IOC, doesn’t blame the swimmers but the hand that feeds them, claiming a lack of funding is the “difference between gold and silver”.
Asked if funding was an issue, Coates was dismissive.
“No,” he said.
Whatsoever?
“No.”
At the annual meeting in April, Coates had told the room: “The AOC is providing funding of $15.3 million to prepare our athletes and $15.4 million to send the team to the London Games. But the reality is we are being out-funded by the other nations and face a massive challenge at the London Games.”
Reminded of that remark, Coates said: “We did say we’re not whingeing about funding and we now have enough funding. But in my AGM speech I absolutely nailed that we received the funding and we’re happy with that. And we don’t allocate the money. The AOC does not receive government money. We agitate, we lobby for increased funding for the national federations. They are accountable to the Australia Sports Commission and the AIS. We give them some funding for international competition, we give the athletes funding direct for medals. It’s not our money that they’re spending.”
Some believe Coates has back-pedalled on his stance about funding in fear it will be cut. As for Gosper’s remarks, Coates says this: “That’s Kevin’s take on it. He’s a senior IOC member and that’s his take. My position and the AOC’s position is that it’s not an issue of funding.”
Federal Minister for Sport Kate Lundy has been telling everyone in London that silver isn’t the new black but the new gold. “The Aussies silver lining tells an amazing story of excellence and effort,” she gushed two days ago.
There is growing belief within the Australian team that the media has been too tough, even though Laurie Lawrence tells every athlete in every impassioned motivational speech that “anything but gold isn’t good enough”.
And Coates wins gold for Australia in the triple reverse backflip!!
However, at London 2012, there is unlikely to be a moment more utterly gobsmacking than the Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates declaring the key to an improved performance by Australia was to make sport compulsory in school, and to thus increase participation rates.
The federal government has treated expenditure on Olympic sports mostly as an expensive photo opportunity.
What made Coates’s comment so jaw-dropping was it involved a backflip that, on the gymnastics mat, would have scored a perfect 10. This was the same John Coates whose organisation seemingly exercised every political muscle in its successful attempt to bury the findings of the Crawford Report into government sports funding – a report that, among many sensible suggestions, strongly advocated the restoration of physical education in schools.This was the John Coates who was dragged before that inquiry, despite the quasi-diplomatic immunity claimed by International Olympic Committee grandees during their luxurious jaunts across the planet.
Advertisement The same man whose organisation either cannot, or will not, justify the benefits its generous funding provides the broader community, beyond spurious notions such as the Olympic ”feelgood factor”, ”international prestige” and the chest-beating contests with other nations similarly obsessed with the medals table.
The man whose organisation eventually delivered a 229-page submission to that inquiry that was little more than a longwinded and costly wish list on behalf of elite performers. The AOC’s untested, perhaps even self-deluded, claims about its impact on grassroots sports were echoed in London by the Australian team’s deputy chef de mission Kitty Chiller. In defending Australia’s performance, Chiller said: ”There’s thousands of kids running around the backyard because of Cathy Freeman. Thousands on a bike because of Cadel Evans.”
Yet, what little research has been done – none of it by the AOC – suggests the Olympics have no significant impact on participation rates, beyond short-lived spikes in attendance at programs such as Little Athletics. Indeed, one study by the Australian centre for Olympic studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, showed that participation by people aged 15-plus in 14 out of 21 Olympic sports decreased after the Sydney Olympics.
One of the key recommendations of the Crawford Report was to empower individual Olympic sports, and to make them more responsible for their own administration. An eminently sensible conclusion given many of what are, between Olympics, minor sports are run like corner shops compared with the standards achieved by the major football codes.
But with elite athletes catered for in national and state institutes, and funding for Olympic sports guaranteed under the protective umbrella of the AOC and the Australian Sports Commission, there is little motivation for the administrators of marginal sports to improve those standards. For too many, marching in a blazer behind the national flag at the opening ceremony has been the objective, not merely a benefit.
As well-meaning and hard-working as many administrators might be, their sports are ill-equipped to recruit and nurture young athletes. Thus, the chance to broaden participation – with the benefit of improved public health and a larger pool from which to identify elite performers – has been lost.
Apart from some tinkering with the ASC administration, through which Olympic funding is channelled, the Crawford Report was torpedoed. It was a victim of the AOC’s aggressive, self-protective lobbying, and opportunistic politicians; the type who can stare down a foreign despot, yet – as the soccer World Cup bid fiasco also proved – go weak at the knees at the sight of a green and yellow tracksuit.
Indeed, for its impertinence – Coates grandiosely referred to the Crawford Report as ”well-meaning” – the AOC was rewarded with a generous funding increase, taking to $170 million the amount spent on elite athletes by the federal Government each year. Without anything so inconvenient as a cost-benefit analysis required.
LONDON, Aug 12, 2012 (AFP) – – A lack of funding was not behind Australia’s below par London Games performances, rather some sports had to take a serious look at themselves, Australian Olympic boss John Coates said Sunday.
Australia slipped to 10th on the medal standings from sixth in Beijing four years ago and will come away from London with seven golds, half of what the team achieved in Beijing.
As recriminations continue over Australia’s overall performance, Australian Olympic Committee president Coates said money wasn’t the problem, but that some sports administrators had allowed things to drift in the lead-up to London.
“I am absolutely certain that the sports have to look at themselves, rather than look for more money,” Coates told a press debriefing here.
“They are largely being very, very well funded by the (government-backed) Australian Sports Commission and with that comes responsibilities of delivering.”
Coates said he had written to presidents or chief executives of Australia’s Olympic sports before the Games expressing his concerns.
“I was concerned, about 18 months out from these Games, whether the sports themselves — the presidents and the executives of the sports — were taking enough ownership of the objectives that they had set,” he said.
“And it may be fair for them to rely on very good high performance managers but, and I’m not going to be specific here, but it has to come from the top.
“Any corporation is only as good as its CEO or chairman and the direction that is coming from there.”
The AOC had projected Australia winning 35 medals in London, which is what the total the team collected, but they were well down on the predicted 15 gold medals based on international results.
Australia came away from Beijing with 45 medals, including 14 gold.
Coates pointed his finger at swimming for the fall-off in gold medals.
“The significant difference …between these results and the results in Beijing is swimming,” Coates said.
“In Beijing it contributed 20 of the 46 medals there and they contributed 10 here.
“It must be possible for us to get back to where we were in swimming … if we can better coordinate it, better utilise sports science, and ensure our coaches are thoroughly up to date, it’s possible.”
Swimming Australia has announced a review into its team’s disappointing haul of one gold, six silver and three bronze in the pool in London — their lowest tally since Barcelona in 1992.
Not a bad effort of Olympic Gold Medal Back Pedalling – is it!!
Lets just put all those comments into one cohesive hypocritical, U-turning, back pedalling perspective and look at them again?
THE Australian Olympic Committee president, John Coates, has been calling for more taxpayer funding of elite sports at the same time as his organisation sits atop $100 million in funds, financial accounts show.
Besides being president of the AOC, for which he is paid $482,000 a year, Mr Coates is chairman of the foundation.
In November, he said Australia’s London Olympics medal tally would be reduced because state sports institutes were not getting enough money.
He had previously dismissed as ”insulting” a 2009 government report calling for money to be diverted to grassroots sports. And he returned to the theme last week, saying a flood of money for swimming approved in 2010 came too late to salvage Olympic gold at London.
Reminded of that remark, Coates said: “We did say we’re not whingeing about funding and we now have enough funding. But in my AGM speech I absolutely nailed that we received the funding and we’re happy with that. And we don’t allocate the money. The AOC does not receive government money. We agitate, we lobby for increased funding for the national federations. They are accountable to the Australia Sports Commission and the AIS. We give them some funding for international competition, we give the athletes funding direct for medals. It’s not our money that they’re spending.”
Kevan Gosper, Australia’s senior representative on the IOC, doesn’t blame the swimmers but the hand that feeds them, claiming a lack of funding is the “difference between gold and silver”.
Some believe Coates has back-pedalled on his stance about funding in fear it will be cut. As for Gosper’s remarks, Coates says this: “That’s Kevin’s take on it. He’s a senior IOC member and that’s his take. My position and the AOC’s position is that it’s not an issue of funding.”
As recriminations continue over Australia’s overall performance, Australian Olympic Committee president Coates said money wasn’t the problem, but that some sports administrators had allowed things to drift in the lead-up to London.
“I am absolutely certain that the sports have to look at themselves, rather than look for more money,” Coates told a press debriefing here.
“They are largely being very, very well funded by the (government-backed) Australian Sports Commission and with that comes responsibilities of delivering.”
Coates said he had written to presidents or chief executives of Australia’s Olympic sports before the Games expressing his concerns.
“I was concerned, about 18 months out from these Games, whether the sports themselves — the presidents and the executives of the sports — were taking enough ownership of the objectives that they had set,” he said.
“And it may be fair for them to rely on very good high performance managers but, and I’m not going to be specific here, but it has to come from the top.
“Any corporation is only as good as its CEO or chairman and the direction that is coming from there.”
I suspect Mr Coates was told in no un-certain terms by the Government, Media and public polls and responses to get his hand out of our pockets!!!, and stop trying to push Australian expectations in matching the performances of much richer and larger countries by trying to outspend them.
And of course all the while getting paid very well himself and hoarding a $100M of taxpayer’s previous funding! How rich is that!!!
Congratulations to the UK for a successful games without trouble, and host nation performance, just avoid being sucked into spending more and more to fund “elite sports” winning “gold” medals once every 4 years “over all else”.
regards
Mark Pilkington
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