These days obesity levels have a correlation with IQ, so says a study I saw not too long ago.

I can’t see how it’s the right thing to force an athlete, on a dole level handout whilst training, eventually getting a decent earn, to pay it back to the Govt. Where do you draw the line? You went to a 4-day training camp 7 years ago, we’ve CPI’ed the cost to $1,200, so pay that back too thanks. Talk about a disincentive to earn.

Reducing or stopping the payouts when they are self-sufficient – different story. But paying them back?

Think about it this way. You put monmey into a kid’s Little Athletics club so they can improve, and then when they are good, they have to fund $30,000 per annum to go overseas for competition.

Pip wrongly assumes that if a sport is followed by kids, it will generate top $ at the snr level. He also wrongly assumes that if it does, it will put the money back into elite jnr coaching. Not true – look at swimming as well. Athletics is the poor cousin, because it’s so much tougher to excel in it than in swimming.

I was at a Little Aths meet on Saturday – the obese people (and ironically there were many) were drinking coke and eating chips and ice creams.

Fly – it’s also about getting more money into sport at primary school level – and hockey should definitely be one of the choices available for primary school kids to play.

I’ve said above – looking at years 5 and 6 – split up the school year into six segments of around six weeks each – and kids would play one specific sport for those six weeks, incl basics, training and games.

You’d have some standard ones that most schools would do: cricket, athletics, soccer and netball, and then you’d have others from which all schools could choose: touch footy, hockey, basketball, softball, auskick, etc.

This is where the focus of Crawford’s findings should lead us – getting kids playing sport at school again.

I’m not sure why people are assuming I’m somehow against Athletics. If ou read my Roar blurb, you will note that at one stage I held the triple jump record at my primary school.

The point is, we used to do athletics at primary school, and my guess is that that is now a rarety.

Some money needs to be directed back to primary school PE where kids can learn and practice stuff like track and field; soccer; cricket; touch footy; netball; etc.

1. There are stacks of professional sports people who are on healthy paypackets but received no, or very little, government support – and the most lucrative of these ply their trade overseas.

2. Re financial sustainability – part of Crawford’s recommendations is to have greater accountability and greater outcomes-based methodologies for the money provided (rather than some whimsical notion that we will do well at the Olympics, thereby filling the hearts of all Australians with pride).

Also the AOC needs to get rid of the Elitist attitude, but I think most people have already said that

As I said make sure it’s financially sustainable, but what you seem to keep talking about or is it talking up is to make sure sport pays for itself. Well in Australia no sport that pays for itself can call itself truly International can it, therefore how does an Australian compete Internationally in sports that cannot pay for themselves but are of agreed-upon value?

The bottom line for me is why should I, as a taxpayer, fund the dreams and aspirations of your children, when as Australians our governments are failing to provide basic essential services?

I am a sports tragic but I still believe that it rates waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy below the the genuine needs of society.

The hundreds of millions poured into relatively few sports people and administrators could be better spent to provide better essential government services.

damn lag, technically was saying something similar (and longer), but i dont think that the funding provides nil gain to Australia – a kid that doesn’t like running but enjoys the sport of Archery deserves the opportunity to participate in it at the same price as his best mate that plays footy/rugby/afl – the skills and health gains are still there. The fundingt just needs to be directed south/grassroots rather than north/elite level

re: 1) need an increase in participation of activities/sports by kids and technically as this affects health in the long term (and as the government funds hospitals) its important this gets funded and reduces poor health in the longer term

2) per capita we are spending a lot more than other nations on developing elite sport, we neither have the population or resources to continue this

we need to develop a system where we have our kids running around and keeping fit whilst continuing to fund our top end of sports??? we cant have both guys.
While I totally agree that converting northern state grounds into ovals is disgusting – the rectangle sports are much more popular there, we do need to enhance our health rather than our “elite” athletes.
The report “advises” and remember the government doesn’t have to listen to this, that we promote more grassroots participation. This does not necessarily mean AFL or NRL or RU or Soccer (sorry – what is the shorthand for football/soccer??) rather a simple cheap way of keeping our kids fit.

I personally think ideally this works to the track athletes – we should develop more running grounds/tracks for young kids to parcitipate on, we have reasonable amounts of sports grounds and a running track around a already set up park costs less.

Just remember that the government doesn’t need to take the WHOLE report and implement it, rather it’ll do whatever will get the most voters, and my guess is that the loss of track voters would be more than the loss of any AFL voters (who are unlikely to change their vote as this issue doesn’t affect their sport significantly), so dont expect too big cuts to the elite end, rather a cut from other gov funding (or maybe increase in beer tax – god forbid) put into the grassroots.

And to whoever knows their running, the more miles these kids run, the more likely we’re going to develop another Gebrselassie

Olympic funding chews up hundreds of millions of dollars per annum for no perceivable gain to Australia in any way, shape or form.

yes – but so what – the world is full of bizarre human activities – they don’t all need to be funded by the taxpayer!!

One other thing – about value – Crawford has made this point as well – at the moment Government funds are being handed out to elite sports with zero accountability – zero reporting – and on the basis of zero outcome statements.

For anyone to argue that this is reasonable is barking up the wrong tree.

You’re basically saying if you want to play sport internationally, either be rich or choose a sport where you get paid a lot. Even in rugby, where the top playrs do get paid a lot, the juniors have to raise supplementary funds.

In your mind I am sure you could have become the world champion in any number of sports.

You may be surprised that quite a lot of young people participate in sports that are not only played in Australia and the former Empire, even if they don’t make it to the back pages of your newspaper, and they don’t have the problems of obesity on which you base your response.

It may well be that they are commited and very capable athletes.

You are wrong in suggesting they and their parents don’t have to run bbq’s and other fund raisers. Anyone involved in junior sport has to work hard. Perhaps your experience is different, in which case you don’t need any funding.