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The Australian Sports Commission (ASC) wants a national lottery to help fund the nation’s next Olympic team, after admitting the Rio squad fell short of expectations.
The ASC wants more funding for Australian athletes and today proposed a replica of Great Britain’s model where a national lottery funds the Olympic team.
Britain finished second on the medal tally in Rio, with 70 per cent of its funding coming from a lottery.
ASC chairman John Wylie said an Australian national lottery would help to increase sports funding.
“The UK this year will invest around 60 per cent more than Australia in high-performance sport, made possible in large measure due to its national lottery,” he said.
“It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the British model is better and smarter than ours.”
“We at the ASC want to see an online national sports lottery introduced here, which we believe does not encourage irresponsible gambling,” Mr Wylie said.
At a media conference in Melbourne, Mr Wylie also paid tribute to the Australian Olympic team but admitted Australia “fell short of expectations” at the Brazil games.
Winning Edge strategy to remain
He said the ASC would stick with its at times controversial Winning Edge funding model used over the last four years, that puts more focus on traditionally successful sports such as swimming and cycling.
Mr Wylie said one response, when assessing Australia’s performance in Rio, would be to reject Winning Edge and “retreat to the comfort of the past”.
“We believe the opposite is true,” he said.
He said the Winning Edge program was part of a 10-year plan.
“Four years ago we set an aspirational goal of Australia returning to the top five in the Olympic medal table as part of a 10-year plan for rejuvenation of Olympic sport after the London Olympics,” Mr Wylie said.
He said Australia had only come top five four times in the history of the modern games.
The commission also suggested a merger between the Canberra-based Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and state institutes.
AIS director Matthew Favier said a panel had been established to consider the AIS’s role into the future.
“One of the matters that will be considered further is a much closer relationship between the AIS and the state-based institutes and academies of sport,” he said.
In a statement, Swimming Australia welcomed the continuing commitment to the Winning Edge strategy.
Swimming Australia CEO Mark Anderson said that the support of Winning Edge had enabled swimming to make significant progress both in and out of the pool.
“Australia’s Winning Edge is a 10-year strategy, and since 2012 we have made significant progress across all areas of our sport in collaboration with our high performance partners,” Mr Anderson said.
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