Shooter Russell Mark fires up over Olympic funding strategy he says is destroying his sport

GOLD medal-winning shooter Russell Mark claims Australia’s aggressive Olympic funding strategy is wasting money and destroying his sport.

London Olympics 2012. Australian Olympic shooter Russell Mark gets some practice in at the Royal Artillery Barracks venue.

GOLD medal-winning shooter Russell Mark claims Australia’s aggressive Olympic funding strategy is wasting money and destroying his sport.

Mark was commenting after revelations the Federal Government had ordered an investigation into the operations of the Australian Institute of Sport following accusations it was being embarrassingly underused.

Australia changed its funding strategy after a modest effort at the London Olympics, unveiling the Winning Edge program which cut some AIS programs, put more onus on sports to run themselves and focused funding on potential medal winners rather than the rank and file beneath them.

Mark, a gold medallist at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, who retired last year, said an Australian Cup shooting event at the Olympic range in Sydney at the weekend showed how the new funding system was killing his sport.

“There were five Olympic events and two of the five (men’s and women’s skeet) got no entries, zero,’’ he said.

“In the women’s trap we had two people. That is the Winning Edge policy at large.

‘‘The range was deserted. You can’t run a sport like that.

“It has got to the stage where people are not even bothering to enter.

“I am sure it is happening in other sports. If you are at the top of the pyramid it’s great and I am the first to admit I was in the Winning Edge program before I retired.

“But the people below me holding up the pyramid were running out of money.

“People are not participating any more because it is so top heavy.’’

Mark said the demise of Australian shooting on a world stage would only get worse.

“This is what really kills me,” he said. “The Australian shooting team became the best in the world in the 1990s because we had a very simple selection policy.

“We had two events. We added the scores together and whoever hit the most represented Australia.

“We had so many good shooters we won back-to-back world championships.

“In the past two years the Australian shooting team has not had enough people to field a team in the World Championship (teams event). You only need three.

“We had two. Winning Edge cut their funding off at two because there was not a third person they thought was worthy.

“If we do not do well in the Rio Olympics, it will hurt, but I can tell you that the Games after that – in Tokyo – will be an absolute debacle.

“They run these selection trials which are complicated because administrators need to be able to justify their job.

“We have a $2.6 million budget and $1 million of that is on staff salaries. We could get by on $100,000 salaries and send more athletes away.

“It is not just shooting – it is a lot of sports. The Winning Edge policy is not working.”

Originally published as Shooter Russell Mark fires up over Olympic funding strategy he says is destroying his sport