Poor Rio Olympics proves Australian sports have taken a backwards step

NOT even an eleventh hour gold medal scramble could alter the reality that Australia has some serious questions to ask about its sporting future.

Is Australian sport on the downhill?

NOT even an eleventh hour gold medal scramble could alter the reality that Australia has some serious questions to ask about its sporting future.

If Australia rated the London Olympics a disaster how will it rate a Games where it will not get much more?

These were supposed to be the rebound Games.

Instead the message is that many Australia’s Olympic sports have stagnated and, some like hockey, have gone worryingly backwards.

What has happened to Australian sport?

Big decisions need to be made about small sports. The basing of the two national Australian hockey sides in Perth has not delivered the rewards expected.

Some states feel disconnected to their stars who migrate to Perth to live when the game at grassroots level is craving their presence in their home states.

Australia’s team featured a historical first with more women than men, but with women’s sport booming with a new AFL competition, and women’s netball, cricket and soccer national leagues expanding many promising female athletes who would have been Olympics bound a decade ago are sure to find their way to other sports.

The Australian Sports Commission’s Winning Edge program shamelessly focused its funding on potential medal winners.

Rio Day 10: Aussies at the 2016 Olympics

VIEW GALLERY

Some small sports such as shooting felt this has caused their sport to wither because it needs its funding to be spread wide enough to keep those beyond the top few stars in the sport.

Former Olympic gold medal winner shooter Russell Mark has said that sports like shooting will perform worse at the next Games in Tokyo than they have in Rio (one gold medal) because their talent pool is contracting.

“If we don’t perform up to expectations at these Games there is going to be some very nervous people connected with Winning Edge,’’ Mark said before the Games.

There will be too as Australia again finds that its lofty pre-Games expectations have been mown down to size in dramatic style.

####

Originally published as Poor Rio Olympics proves Australian sports have taken a backwards step