I have been stewing on this article for a couple of years now, since about the time it dawned on me our national sporting slide was no short term blip, but might be here to stay.
Like some other Roarers, I was searching for answers as to why we have become sport’s also-rans.
Eventually it occurred to me I might be looking at the problem in the wrong way. I mean, why should a nation of 23 million people, ranked 52nd in the world in terms of population and 16th for economic size (thanks Wikipedia), expect to outperform the globe consistently at anything?
Perhaps it is more productive to try to work out how we got so good, back when we were good?
Thinking back, it seemed to me the 10 year period of roughly 1995-2005 was a particularly magic time to follow Aussie athletes at anything they did.
So I started to think about who those sports stars were and what they might have in common.
Across a range of sports, I guessed that athletes hit their peaks between the ages of 25-35 (yes, I know gymnasts are younger, as often are swimmers, etc, but sailors, archers, shooters are usually significantly older, so on balance for a majority of sports, 25-35 seemed right).
So, picking a mid-point of athletes being 30 years of age in 2000, I took a look at the Australian Bureau of Statistics to see whether there was anything special about the year 1970.
Well, it turns out that there was something in the water, but there was even more of it in the following year – 1971. That was the year of the most births recorded in Australian history; 276,400 to be exact.
It turned out to be a sharp peak in the number of births that would not be surpassed again in this country until 2007, by which time the total population had almost doubled. Extraordinary, really.
So, using this year of births as the mid-point and exemplar of what many have already termed the golden generation, let’s examine our sporting results in the decade 1996-2006 – the years this cohort were at their sporting peak.
I have deliberately chosen a snapshot of high profile international sports, to water down cultural bias and highlight sporting performance versus the world. Hence I have excluded AFL and the NRL.
Let’s start with the daddy of them all, the Olympic Games.
1996 Atlanta – seventh place, 41 medals.
2000 Sydney – fourth place, 58 medals.
2004 Athens- fourth place, 50 medals.
This was Australia’s finest period, by any measure. The only other games where we came close to this level of performance were Beijing in 2008, which was at the tail end of this dream run, and 1956, where we had a home Olympics and most of the developed world was still rebuilding after World War II.
Within these medal tallies sat team sports like hockey and basketball, where they produced what are acknowledged as our greatest ever national teams, and others like rowing and cycling, where we pumped out teams, crews and individuals who won gold like never before.
How about the national game, cricket.
In World Cups, we were runners up in 1996, and world champions in 1999 and 2003 (and 2007). Can’t get much better than that.
From 1999 to 2001, the Test team set a world record for consecutive wins of 16 (which they later emulated from 2006-2008). We held the Ashes for that entire period, until the narrow upset series loss in 2005, which was ruthlessly avenged in 06/07 with a 5-0 whitewash.
We won historic away series in Pakistan and India, something that had eluded this group’s forebears.
The team produced players whose statistics and deeds as a combination were historical freaks, with a top seven batting order who all averaged around 50 or more, and the legendary Shane Warne/Glenn McGrath bowling combination.
Rugby union? After spending much of our history being just off the pace with the top tier sides of New Zealand and South Africa, the Wallabies went through an amazing period that included a World Cup win in 1999, and runners up in 2003.
Perhaps even more noteworthy, in terms of difficulty, Australia held the Bledisloe Cup from 1998-2002, a contest in which we have only ever won 20% of series contested. We haven’t won it since.
In addition, the Wallabies defeated the British and Irish Lions in a full series for the first and only time in 2001, and won two of their three Tri-Nations titles in 2001 and 2002.
Sounding a little Anglo-centric with these sports? How about the World Game – football.
The Socceroos qualified for the 2006 World Cup, for only the second time ever, with a veteran team of professionals who were playing in the English Premier League, Italian Serie A, and other European leagues.
Never before, or since, have we had so many Australians playing first-team football in the elite overseas leagues.
The team defied all expectations to make it out of their pool to the round of 16, still our best ever result. This team was populated by the Socceroos’ so-called ‘Golden Generation’, with players such as Mark Viduka, Tim Cahill, Harry Kewell, Lucas Neil, Mark Schwarzer, Mark Bresciano, and John Aloisi.
We had not seen their likes before in Australian football, and unfortunately we have not since.
An individual sport? Let’s try tennis.
It is well documented Australia dominated the game in the 50s and 60s, were still top tier in the 70s, but fell away in the 80s as the world discovered the game.
How did we fare in the far more competitive tennis landscape of the 1990s and 2000’s?
We had a mini-revival of sorts with four mens Grand Slam titles being won by Pat Rafter (1997,1998) and Lleyton Hewitt (2000,2001). We also won the last two of our Davis Cups in 1999 and 2003. We haven’t gone near it since.
We could look at any number of sports that tell a similar tale, like netball, snowsports, swimming, cycling, rowing etc.
The evidence is only circumstantial, but the link between the historic and dramatic spike in home grown Aussies being born in 1971, and the freakish domination of many world sports 25-35 years later is compelling.
Of course, not every sports star of the period was born in 1971. The two to three years either side of 1971 were also high years for births, so we are really talking about a roughly seven year cohort of 1968-1974 forming the backbone of national success.
I think this is significant for two reasons.
Firstly, the general Australian population has grown very healthily year on year, even as the number of births was falling and stagnating from the mid 70s until the early 2000s (except for a brief up-tick around 1992).
This indicates that in the field of sporting performance, it’s the number of children actually born in the country that counts. The overall size of the population, not so much.
Secondly, what does this mean for Australian sport? Do we have to wait until the children of 2007 reach sporting maturity, in roughly 2032-42, to experience our next Golden Age?
Or will the mini surge in population that occurred in 1992 deliver some form of respectability earlier than that, in 2017-2027? God I hope so!
Anyway, being a child of this generation myself, I have my theories as to why a birth surge contributed to sporting heaven for this country either side of the millennium.
Simply, at the micro scale, it bred competition. Bigger families meant more competition at home for everything, and less ‘princesses’.
Bigger class sizes at suddenly bursting schools, crammed into demountables and competing for the teacher’s attention, led to more phlegmatic and practical attitudes in the students.
School teams and age-group representative teams were all tougher to make than ever before, and eventually the job market was dire when this cohort graduated in a flood into the economic recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Put simply, this generation had to fight just a little bit harder to get to the top in anything, compared to their younger and older compatriots, and had a less entitled attitude than later groups.
Over to you Roarers. Do we have to wait until the children of 1992 or 2007 grow up to start kicking bum again? Was it a one-off moment in time?
Or is it just a cycle that will turn back in our favour pretty soon anyway?
Paul
Guest
I dont think Australia isnt doing to bad according to this website. If you look back a couple of years ago, it isnt as bad as some suggest. http://www.greatestsportingnation.com/ Also, I dont know why people are blaming the AFL and league for the decline in Australian sports. Its just a poor excuse. I didn't notice anyone using this excuse when Australian sports reached a high back around the late 90s and early 2000s which IMO is the greatest sporting period since the 56 games. You will notice that every host country for an Olympics will experience a lot of sporting success that usually begins 3-4 years just before the Olympics and usually last for another 3-4 years after an Olympic year. Its all about increased funding and its sporting sucess that usually takes 2-3 years to kick in and another 3-4 years to wear off. Britain is currently experiencing this. They were hopeless at a lot of sports and something we had been use to watching for years. Their transformation did not begin till 2008. By 2012/2013- they were winning things across a wide range of sports. In the next 2-3 things will die down especially after the 2016 Olympics and it will be the usual England at sports Same thing occurred with Spain in 92, Korea 88, US 96, Australia 2000 and the Chinese in 2008. You can see now that the Chinese are not a dominant as they were across a wide range of sports between 2004-2010.
Paul
Guest
Imagine if all French,English football players, NZ league players all over the NRL decided to switch to union?
Kane Cassidy
Roar Guru
I think the search for talent has become far too informal and subjective. I remember when I was in year 10 Australian Volleyball was rolling out a system to identify potential elite players, they subjected us students to a range of physical tests and measured heights and such, I was excited because I thought it was an opportunity to learn about a sport I didn't know much about, but some faceless Volleyball board determined I wasn't good enough to play all through a bunch of numbers saying how far I coud stretch and how far my reach was. They didn't even have try out games it was a simple "No your numbers don't fit" It disgusted me to no end, how they wouldn't let someone eager to learn about the game and play it even play it because I didn't fit their numbers, as far as they were concerned, I could never play at an elite level so I couldn't play at all. Things like that are happening across all sports, a cold scientific approach is replacing the traditional "The cream rises to the top" Way that preceeded it. You get to be the best by testing yourselves against a great array of other players, not by facing your stable mates who are subject to the exact same training as you, Australian sport is being lost in a haze of joyless informal science.
vebie
Guest
Yes Liam we had some Sydney follow up no doubt but like all parts of a rebuilding process you need to look how to manage decline and build again..and if we look at money invested post Sydney it has been decreasing and so a fade out has occurred and we now are behind the start line. The Olympics is only one measure however and as already pointed out, the rest of the world acorss a number of sports are catching up and that makes it even a greater challenge. But if we look across all sports, if we don’t respond with resources and smarter thinking, forget the discussion on fade out or not - we will be forever playing catch up.
Liam Ovenden
Roar Pro
Australia had outstanding results in Athens in 2004 and still very good results in 2008. It took 12 years to effect the "Sydney fade out".
Give me the Aussie pls
Guest
From Sydney Morning Herald: Aussie medals cost $10m a piece GB medals cost $7m a piece http://m.smh.com.au/olympics/off-the-field/what-price-medals-20120810-23zua.html
Boomshanka
Guest
http://simon.forsyth.net/olympicsGDP2012.html GDP per medal Australia rated 31st in 2012
Liam Ovenden
Roar Pro
Minz, surely you would agree that it's a bit of a stretch to say Aussie Rules is draining away our best female athletes from other sports!
Vebie
Guest
As an Aussie working in sport in the UK I can tell you that sporting success has had a real impact across number of areas of society which shows that money spent on sporting excellence has wider impact than celebrating a ‘gold medal’ Here in the UK there is growth in sport participation, this is getting people more physically active, and there is a winning mentality that is shown in schools and business – once they were happy to be second and now they want to win and be a power house and guess what, you find it beyond the sports field. Hard to generalise, but no doubt as a country, we punch above our weight in certain sports but in I find is tough to see a record breaking cricket TV deal for men, when you look at our current standard but perhaps we not that far away from England who stills shows the 1966 World Cup final – we just can’t let go the past when we were the dominant side. But I agree rather than pointing blame – let do what we are good – getting on with it. Let’s look at where we have responded – Swimming performance at the Worlds following 2012, a Sailing team that took and beat the best in the world in their own waters at the Olympics, Hockey and Polo teams who were world beaters, had retirements and now are rebuilding to become international threats once more and finally the Opals who over the last 20 years have unlike any of our team sports consistency have been on the medal podium showing a culture of what it takes to rebuild while successful and compete in a sport that has one of the largest number of countries taking part. Yes we need more investment – UK sport has invested more money since their Home Olympic Games ( there will be no Sydney fade out in Rio for them), we need administrators who are not on gravy trains and want to build a sport system that is the envy of the world and perhaps we need to look at sports who have winning culture and show those to our next generation to show exactly what is required to be the best.
Minz
Guest
Really? I know more than a few women who have tried aussie rules and given up what they were playing before because the aussie rules is just so much fun to play! Mind you, it was mostly rugby union they were playing before...
Minz
Guest
I love sport, but there's no way I would choose it over better schools or hospitals. Time for us to let go of the obsession, methinks! Celebrate the competitive spirit of people and let them do their best, but let go of the feeling that sport defines us.
Liam Ovenden
Roar Pro
Oh, got ya.
Whiskers
Guest
Agree, but my point is this: if you're gifted athletically, why wouldn't you want to play football?
nickoldschool
Roar Guru
Very true Johnno. For me one of the main problem France has is that sport has no importance whatsoever for us in schools. Here and especially in the US you have great facilities, stadiums, teams, scholarships etc. Sports like tennis and golf have been elitists for a very long time there and I think many young French aren't into these sports really, especially kids of immigrants or even middle class. And it's also hard for every country to get a Lendl, Becker, Federer or Nadal. The Tcheques and Germans haven't had a star for a long time too, and am not sure that Switzerland will have another Federer in the next 25 years. Noah wasn't even great. Look at the Brits before Murray too. As we were saying before its a very competitive world and it's hard for most nations to be at the top in different world sports, except if you're the US or China maybe now.
Liam Ovenden
Roar Pro
Whiskers, I reckon the Aussie Rules argument is a bit of a fallacy. They say it has taken all of the tall athletic types from the Southern States away from cricket (according to John Inverarity), which would largely imply fast bowlers in cricket terms. Hang on, isn't batting our problem??? We have plenty of young fast bowlers. I would doubt it has taken away many rugby players as the northern states don't produce many AFL standard footballers in absolute terms. As far as Olympic sports go, AFL was always well paid (comparitively) to the largely amateur track, swimming, rowing, etc, so I don't see that as a particularly new phenomenon. Our decline in Tennis is probably more about the rise of the rest of the world. And of course AFL has no bearing at all on womens sports. I just don't see the expansion of AFL nationally is anything other than a sideline issue in international sporting decline.
Give me the Aussie please!
Guest
At London 2012 Australia topped $$ to medals, I'll try and find the article. I think it was in The Australian.
Matthew Skellett
Guest
Australia has been punching way way way above it's weight on the world sporting stage for decades , the Australian public are used to hearing our teams/sporting individuals win and if they're not that's kinda ok we just switch to the next sporting channel to see us winning something else -the Matildas have a real chance at winning the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2015 , the Stingers got silver in the World Water Polo Championships , the Hockeyroos and the Kookaburras have made the finals of the FIH World Hockey League the Opals and the Boomers are fine tuning for the FIBA World Cup the Soccerroos are winging their way to Rio the Kangaroos are favourites again for the RL World Cup so hey even though we are going through a slump in da crikkit (men's crikkit-the women are killin' it !!! :-) ) as you see above you would have to be a profound pessamist to say we don't have a lot to smile about :-)
Whiskers
Guest
Yes, it's all well and good to blame Australian football, except of course if you think it's better than any of the sports we'd supposedly be competitive if it was obliterated. One thing that Australian football haters overlook is this: it's a great game to play, especially for the athletically gifted. I
Sawyer
Roar Rookie
From another perspective. AFL - Only country to play it. fair enough. League - Top ranked team in the world. Doubt many would dispute their dominance (notable exception being the 2008 WC). Union - 3rd in the world. Up against the All Blacks who stand out as one of the all time dominant teams in world sport. Wouldn't be unfair to say that the Wallabies are extremely competitive against all other nations. Football - 3 consecutive world cups. Perhaps not at the same standard as a few years ago, but still batting above their weight when you consider footballs position in a crowded Australian sporting landscape when compared to more football-centric nations. Basketball - 10th/2nd in the respective men's/women's rankings. 7th/3rd respectively in the last Olympics. Hockey - 2nd/6th respectively. Men's team are obviously right up there and the women's team isn't as good after dominating for years. Netball - 2nd in the world. Current world champs. Silver at the Comm games. Athletics - Not the best admittedly, but extremely consistent in terms of Olympic performances. Swimming - Crap after one poor Olympics? Not likely to emulate the results of USA/China at present, but still very competitive if the recent world champs are anything to go by. Tennis - Agreed Australian players (well the men) aren't soaring in the same way they did 10-15 years ago, but that was a remarkably successful period for Scud, Rafter, Hewitt.. Sam Stosur is a grand slam winner and a wonderful athlete by all accounts. Tomic, prat that he is, is immensely talented. For all the dismay, Australia still do remarkably well.
Mike
Guest
I blame Gen Y, they have let the country down.