Australian Sports Commission pushing our Hockeyroos down

The Hockeyroos’ funding will be slashed by up to 60 per cent. Picture: AAP

Attempting to win an Olympic medal, any medal, is extremely tough. No one’s giving them away. But try doing it with one hand tied behind your back.

That’s pretty much what Hockeyroos co-captains Jodie Kenny and Emily Chalker and their teammates will be doing in July. Fighting for a medal at the Tokyo Olympics with a massive burden holding them back.

Six months out from Tokyo, the Hockeyroos have been told that their funding will be slashed by up to 60 per cent because they are not considered legitimate medal chances.

The Hockeyroos aren’t rated as medal chances in Tokyo. Picture: AAP

In a brutal analysis, the Australian Sports Commission has determined that the team, which hasn’t won an Olympic medal in five cycles, has no hope of being on the podium at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. So their funding gets a massive haircut.

They’re not the only ones. As The Australian’s Jacquelin Magnay and Jessica Halloran have revealed in their brilliant investigative series, gymnastics, softball and synchronised swimming have also been told their funding will be downgraded. Taekwondo, table tennis, modern pentathlon, skateboarding, judo, golf, football, equestrian, diving, boxing, basketball, badminton, archery and athletics are all facing cuts.

Bottom line is, if you don’t win a medal in Tokyo your sport has no chance of obtaining significant ongoing funding from the Sports Commission.

Quite why the highly paid administrators with their hands on the purse strings have chosen to break this news now, in the lead-up to Tokyo, is anyone’s guess. But it imposes a massive extra burden on our athletes.

Hockeyroos players, and a host of other athletes, will carry a heavy weight of expectation, knowing the terrible cost to their sport if they fail. They will also feel entirely unloved and unappreciated by the nation’s sporting bosses.

Many of them have sacrificed families, careers and financial security to represent their nation on the biggest stage. And the message they are getting, just when they should be feeling supported and pumped up, is that we don’t really care.

The Hockeyroos are among our most successful teams, winning Olympic gold in 1988, 1996 and 2000 and four Commonwealth Games gold medals, the last at the Glasgow Games in 2014.

Lily Owsley of Great Britain competes with Renee Taylor of the Hockeyroos during the FIH Pro League match earlier in February. Picture: AAP

They have not been so successful recently, but all sports are cyclical. Periods of success are almost always followed by fallow periods as teams rebuild and new stars emerge.

It’s possible to survive such periods and go on to new success if those behind the athletes maintain their support.

But if the funding dries up as soon as the medals stop coming and athletes are told that the fate of their sport could depend on their performance at one Olympics, then there may be no coming back.

As if winning Olympic medals wasn’t tough enough.