Australia's Winning Edge 2012 - 22 - The high performance game plan

The Australian Sports Commission made the announcement of the Winning Edge' program at the spiritual home of sport in this country — the MCG. Since the Sydney Olympic Games Australia's performances at world events has taken a steady decline. The 'Winning Edge' sets new strategies and importantly targets that include Australia being ranked in the top five nations at the Olympic and Paralympics Games — plus 20 world champions each year. Sports Commission Chairman John Wylie is confident that these targets can be met. We think they are very realistic goals. We think Australia has got an amazing sporting heritage and history and love of sport and passion to succeed, Australians love to win at sport so we think it is entirely feasible what we are saying today. We need to be smarter about how we organise our sports and how we run them and the governance of the sports and smarter about trying to access all sorts of new revenue opportunities, like commercial revenue opportunities, that’s what we at the Commission are going to be doing to try and help the sports achieve. With the Australian Institute of Sport remaining as the high performance agency, Sports Commission CEO Simon Hollingsworth says the investment in athletes remains long-term. ‘It will probably take us anywhere between six to eight years to get from potential to podium and sometimes longer, sometimes shorter depends on the talent of course, but you need to take that long term view. What we’re announcing today is not just about the athletes who are going to represent Australia next year or in two years time, it’s about the ones who will represent Australia in five or six or seven years time and that’s a really important part of our investment profile. One of the key areas will be talent identification with Institute of Sport boss Matt Favier announcing an AIS draft camp where talented young athletes will be encouraged to try different sports. It’s a special territory to get into it, to be an Olympic medallist right, so it’s not easy, but certainly we think that we may have an opportunity to facilitate that transfer into a new area and explore something that perhaps they may not have thought was possible before. The Federal Government currently invest $170 million into elite programs. Sports Minister Kate Lundy has endorsed ‘Winning Edge' especially the opportunity for female athletes. ‘I mean every Olympics and Paralympics the women are up there with everybody else so it’s the one time when the coverage is actually way more equitable. So we’ve got a huge opportunity to promote the sport that women play outside of the Olympic and Paralympic cycle so I think that’s not only a challenge there for us but a great opportunity for businesses contemplating a sporting sponsorship and wanting to associate themselves with world-class athletes.” Along with sporting administrators from across Australia, World cycling silver medallist Rachel Neylan is one of a host of athletes set to prosper from the new direction. ‘The strategy behind this framework is really forward thinking, it’s really intelligent, it’s going to streamline a lot more services and mean a lot more money for athletes, a lot more money in the right places, a lot more efficiency and allow for some integration of commercialisation in sport which is really important. A $20 million dollar boost will be made into the AIS to assist athletes and invest in developing and retaining high performance coaches.