Glaswegians were still stacking chairs, dismantling medal daises and perhaps even wondering if “Glasgow: It’s a Bit Shit!” could be turned into a left-field tourism slogan when Australia’s Commonwealth Games Association Chief Perry Crosswhite, disappointed by his country’s failure to top the Games medal table for the first time in 28 years, indicated his desire for the federal government to dig a little deeper into its pockets.

Never mind that England, which took Australia’s place at the head of the Commonwealth Games medal table, has more than double Australia’s population. Never mind that the two nations’ placings on the table could be attributed to their differing fortunes in just two fringe sports (on the broader Australian consciousness), gymnastics and judo. Never mind that England is still riding the funding wave that gathered momentum prior to the 2012 London Olympic Games, Crosswhite still sees Australia’s fall to second place as a problem that needs to be solved.

A similar lament was made following the London Olympics when Australia won “just” seven golds (for a 10th placing overall from 85 nations) and 35 medals in total (the seventh best tally). While that was largely a result of Australia’s poor showing in the swimming pool – where, partly due to the rise of China and France, it won a solitary gold compared to 2000, 2004 and 2008 when it won five, seven and six respectively – the overall impression it created was that of demise across the board.

In Beijing 2008, by comparison, Australia finished sixth in terms of golds won and fifth on overall medals. That, in turn, was inferior to its results in Athens and Sydney (fourth in golds, fourth overall). Nevertheless, considering Australia’s population is just 22 million you’d think seven golds was more than adequate but that’s not how it was universally seen.

During the London Games IOC vice-president, and former Australian Olympian, Kevan Gosper put Australia’s poor showing – again, a relative term – down to the federal government’s cut to Olympic funding after the 2009 Crawford review. He was alluding to the 2010 budget when, as the ABC reported, some $325m was allocated in ongoing funding for sporting programs but just $52m of it was put aside for high performance Olympic sports. About half the amount the Australian Olympic Committee lobbied for.

“There was a suggestion that getting gold medals in the Olympic games was too costly,” Gosper told ABC radio. “Now that really cost us. You’ve got to put money in there. That pays for coaches, it pays for international competition…the money is the difference between silver and gold.”

Yet when the winning of Olympic and Commonwealth Games medals is so closely tied to government funding – and, as such, could be seen as sanctioned international dick measuring – what does a country’s position on a medal table really mean? Did Australia’s gold medal fourth placing in Athens and Sydney mean that Australians (even though we’re a potpourri of races) are somehow inherently proficient in sport, as if all the sunshine we get bestows on us special powers as it does Superman? On the flip side, did Australia’s fall to 10th in London suggest we’re any less of a nation than we were eight years earlier?



And if we are, how does India live with itself? One billion people but no gold medals won in London. What are they doing over there? Who’s running their high-performance sporting institutes? And what about Sweden? Sure, they have a fine social welfare system, but just one gold in London? It’s a wonder anyone there can look each other in the eye.

Australia has long deserved, and much enjoyed, a reputation for “punching above its weight” in matters of sport. But one could easily interpret that as a negative, a sign it invests too much money and value in sport as if only through sport can it assert itself on the world stage. Yes, the cultural cringe at work. That old chestnut.

Of course many, if not most Australians, enjoy sport and seeing our athletes perform well on the world stage. We’re happy for them, for the work they’ve put in, we’re happy to enjoy their performances and to bask in some reflected glory, and we’re appreciative, if not relieved, for the escapism sport provides. But outside of that – and the satisfaction that comes from, say, holding the Ashes after a whitewash, and (this is the really impressive one) never having lost an AFL grand final to a foreign team – what return does a nation get from our athletes performances, from the government’s investment in high-performance sport, bearing in mind that the jury is still out on whether a nation’s good performance at an Olympic Games leads to high participation rates in sport at the grassroots level?



This is not a call to drastically cut funding to high-performance sport, just an opinion that this author – and perhaps most Australians – can and do live quite happily with Australia’s current standing on the Commonwealth Games and Olympic medal tables. Given the controversy of the 2014 federal budget, and seeing how many needy pockets are having governmental hands thrust into them, I don’t see any need to scramble around for extra money just so that Australia can climb a few rungs on a medal table. Australia has plenty going for it – it doesn’t have to rely solely on sport for national self-esteem.