#Australia olympic games tokyo 2020 plus#
While calls for further investment have temporarily ceased, AIS boss Conde says that – in light of the recently-announced funding, plus $54m over two years provided in the 2019 budget to support athlete engagement, well-being and pathways – sports are well-placed. But we maintain that an investment in sport – which, in the scheme of the national budget, is not huge – has a fantastic return for the health and well-being of the community.” “We know the government has a lot on its agenda we just want certainty for the next two years. “We took a view that at this particular time, with the pandemic, we would just seek to maintain the status quo,” says Carroll. Suddenly, in this period of immense economic turmoil, the continuation of that campaign might have seemed tone-deaf. For years, the AOC has noisily advocated for increased high performance funding – government spending on elite sport has not even matched inflation for over a decade. Photograph: Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesĬovid-19 left the Australian sports with a strategic dilemma. Olympic swimmers Cate and and Bronte Campbell pose at the Bronte Baths this week.
“We are very confident about the continuation of the baseline funding,” he says. His counterpart Conde is similarly unconcerned. “I haven’t been given any indication that it will be bad news,” says Carroll. Sports will not know until October, when the federal budget is delivered, whether annual funding will continue at existing levels. While this was much-needed – “otherwise we would have hit a cliff at the end of this year,” says Carroll – the government is yet to make any promises about the “base-line” funding that finances the bulk of high performance operations. The money represented a continuation of support for individual sports to employ additional coaches and sports scientists, after the AIS restructured in recent years, away from a centralised model. Matt Carroll, chief executive of the AOC, told Guardian Australia that this announcement was “absolutely welcome”. In June, sports minister Richard Colbeck answered the first of these pleas, announcing $50.6 million in additional funding for the next two years. In April, the Australian Olympic Committee, Paralympics Australia and Commonwealth Games Australia wrote to the federal government on behalf of their 49 member sports, outlining a three-point plan to support sport during the pandemic.
We now live in an uncertain world with no guarantees.” I am not too sure what that means, but that is our situation. We have been given confirmation that our funding will remain ‘in principle’. “But we have to learn to live with this – sticking our heads in the sand is not a solution. “It has to be a concern,” says Simon Jones, performance director at Cycling Australia. With billions being spent on the Covid-19 response, some stakeholders are nervous about sport being forgotten. While some major disciplines benefit from commercial dollars and ticket revenue, the overwhelming majority of Australian Olympic sports are funded by the federal government. “In many cases, they have had to reduce hours, or staffing, or stand staff down.”
“It has been very painful for most sporting organisations,” says Australian Institute of Sport director Peter Conde.
0 kommentar(er)
