Decline in Australian sporting teams at Rio Olympics

What on earth are you talking about? Are you suggesting there's some sort of magic money tree that goes straight to the athletes other than the grants from their governing bodies? If you're Sir Bradley Wiggins you'll have your salary from Team Sky (same as an Aussie road cyclist would); if you're a track cyclist you're only source of income is via a UK Sport grant. For virtually all the UK Olympic gold medal winners their only source of income (apart from any endorsements one or two could rustle up) is from the grant given to them by their governing body. Similarly the only source of income for the sports' governing bodies is their grant from UK Sports, the figures for which I've given to you broken down to the very pound. The idea that the 274 million pounds is for incidental expenses and there's some mysterious additional pot of money that pays the athletes their 'salaries' is laughable and probably could only come from a bitter Aussie. Good job maths isn't an Olympic sport or you'd probably come last in that as well.

Thats just the figures for how much goes to the sports themselves independent of the athletes. The other figure which is much bigger goes to funding the athletes directly its astonishing that figure is about 700 million per year.Then there is other stuff as well. FOr Ausrtralia the sport figure includes all the payments to the athletes in that sport as well. Great Britainis paying about 120 million per gold medal. Putting in 1 billion a year about 10 times the level of Australia.

This really isn't hard. Try this link: http://www.uksport.gov.uk/our-work/investing-in-sport/current-funding-figures It even breaks it down by sport to the last pound. Short of trying to find out whether the money was handed over in 50 pound notes or 20 pound notes I don't know what more info you need. It may be tough to take but no matter how you play with the figures (and for some reason Aussies have tried every conceivable angle booth over London and now Rio) GB creamed Australia.

http://www.uksport.gov.uk/our-work/investing-in-sport/how-uk-sport-funding-works If your saying UK sports get 272k looking at this they get 70k so is that per year. so either about 1 billion per 4 years or 4 billion per 4 years maybe the first guy was correct..

I'm afraid you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. http://www.skysports.com/olympics/news/15234/10548015/analysing-the-reasons-behind-team-gbs-success-at-rio-olympics-2016 As you'll see from the link over the 4 year cycle from London to Rio UK Sport spent 274m pounds, to field a smaller team than Oz sent. At the current exchange rate that's about 430m Aus dollars. The spend goes up to 350m pounds if you add the paraolympics. I can't find figures in British outlets for Oz spending (no-one seems to be interested in the UK in the also rans), but the figures I've seen in Oz papers suggests approx. 350-370m Aus Dollars. That's a significantly higher per capita spend. Still, you tore it up in sailing around in little dinghies; women's '7's rugby; women's modern pentathlon (fencing and the like) and one of the shooting events. I hear you're great at 'race-walking' as well; although the sports that require some athletic ability don't seem to have fared too well.

Great Britain spend 250 million a year juat from their lottery. Australia spend 100m a year. You might be confusing the 4 year spend with the 1 year spend.

Where did you read that, Nudge, the 'away with the fairies' Times? The figures cited vary slightly but are all around the same ballpark. Oz spent around $370m; GB about $470m. So per capita Oz spent much more.

I doubt that plan. Each time I watched Cambage play she was being bone lazy and not making position. She obviously can and does but she is no Lauren Jackson. The Matildas seemed to do a choke as they were no where near their best. I think all the other teams did as well as they were capable of at present. The track cycling team weren't up to speed in their preparation. It was noticeable that though good enough our riders were being run over at the finish line by the other major contenders in most events.

I was wondering the same thing, who else does? I think New Zealand might?

'On another topic, is Australia the only country that gives their teams names?' No

Read somewhere Australia spent 350,000 million on Olympic athletes in the 4 years between London and rio. Great Britain spent 3.6 billion

A lot of people think we should win because we put money in and focus on the Olympics. They forget that every other country does the same.

Quite right. I think we forget that we have a smaller population than Peru or Nepal. Numbers count.

On another topic, is Australia the only country that gives their teams names? Pearls, opals, stingers etc? Some of them are pretty lame.

Australia targetted those sports which were weak, what happens when everyone else gets the same idea . More countries are looking at funding womens teams now for medals as well which is another Australian tactic. What happens when the others start looking at the womens rugby, and bring in their female sprinters. Baseball is the only exception and thats because they didnt have the top level players at Athens that won't happen at Tokyo.

Opals failed because they didn't have a plan B (Plan A was give it to Cambage and she'll do the rest). Men's rugby was actually about where they expected to be, although playing the same team twice in a day probably wasn't in the script. Women's football was dudded by a referee and assistant who blatantly ignored shootout rules. Hockey teams simply were poor. Could that be a semi accurate summary?

Yes, but this happens to every country in the world. Competition like this always springs upsets and shock losses. The British cycling team have suddenly overtaken us in the velodrome. We always used to beat them. Maybe other basketball and hockey teams are improving. The disappointment to people for me comes more from having a few good Olympics where we maybe over achieved, and were spoilt for medals. All of a sudden we are a bit shell shocked because we are being overtaken by countries that are putting more effort into the Olympics. But sometimes there is nothing you can do about this. We sort of can't accept that we are heading down more to our natural levels. We are only happy when we punch above our weight.

Strange comment SVB, no one is suggesting we can't handle coming 2nd (this would actually have been a fantastic result in a lot of events). With the team sports, the disappointment comes in seeing teams underperform how they have on the world stage in non-Olympic competition - particularly hockey and the womens basketball team.

The Matildas hardly struggled at the quarter final stage. They were put out after extra time in a penalty shootout 6-7.

Has anyone ever thought that other nations with larger populations and more money are also investing in the Olympics? Particularly in sports such as rowing, swimming and cycling which traditionally Australia medals well in. We were also once a powerhouse in tennis, until the rest of the world began playing it. if you can't handle losing or coming second occasionally, then perhaps stick to watching sports that no one else plays. That way you can always tell everyone else you are the best.