The most senior Australian member of the International Olympic Committee says the Federal Government must increase funding to the Australian team if it wants to win more gold medals.

Australia is currently languishing at 24th place in the Olympic medal table, with just one gold medal to its credit.

Former Olympian Kevan Gosper has told ABC Local Radio the team may have won more gold if the Federal Government had not cut its allocation to the Olympic team after the 2009 Crawford review of sports funding.

Sporting programs received nearly $325 million in ongoing funding in the 2010 budget, but the $52 million earmarked for Olympic-focused high-performance programs was only half what the Australian Olympic Committee had lobbied for.

Gosper has told ABC Local Radio that more money needs to be spent on top level coaches and giving athletes experience in international competitions.

"There was a suggestion that getting gold medals in the Olympic games was too costly," he said.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 8 minutes 22 seconds 8 m Kevan Gosper talks to 774 Melbourne Download 3.8 MB

"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."

And he said the Crawford review had "set us back substantially" in the race for gold.

"We've been down on the sort of financial support that we were accustomed to when compared with the financial support that's coming through from other countries, particularly here in Europe," he said.

"The fact is you do need more money in international sports and preparing if you're going to compete with the world."

Performance anxiety

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 4 minutes 3 seconds 4 m 3 s AOC chief John Coates calls for a greater emphasis on sport in schools

This morning Australian Olympic Committee boss John Coates told ABC News 24 that he was disappointed with Australia's medals haul.

He said it was a sign the Federal Government needed to consider changing its policy and funding to give priority to school sports.

"Perhaps the area that needs a lot of attention - and if not, funding and government intention in terms of policy - is getting sport back into the school curricula," he said.

"The British are making a big thing of that being one of the legacies they're looking towards, and they've been achieving that, a greater emphasis on sport in the schools.

"We need that because we've got to make sure we have a talent pool."

Mr Coates admitted Australia was unlikely to reach its aim of finishing in the top-five position in Games.

"We'd need to do something equivalent to [our medal placing] at Beijing [in 2008], which would be 45 medals, or something like that," he said.

"We won't get there. Principally it's because in swimming we got 20 medals in the last Olympic Games and here [in London] we got 10.

"We had a dependency on swimming, but you do need a number of sports in which you can multi-medal."

Federal Sports Minister Kate Lundy defended the performance of athletes at the Games.

"I know a great case has been made for sport in that national curriculum, so we'll see how that plays out," she said.

"We need to take stock of our high performance program, but our athletes are not failing us, they're bringing home bags of silver medals."

But she said the issue of sport in schools was one for states and territories to decide.