Olympic Games 2004 in Athens,Greece

Herald Sun

Why Australia excelled

29aug04

DON'T expect a repeat of Sydney, they warned. Don't put too much pressure on the team, they begged. We are rebuilding, they explained.

Two weeks on and Sydney has been repeated, the team has thrived on pressure and the rebuilding has been completed in record time.
With 17 gold medals and a total of 49, the Athens Olympics have been Australia's best ever.

Better than Melbourne, better than Sydney and a lot better than any other overseas Games.

Why?

Coaching, resources, government funding and planning are among the official explanations.

"Sports have certainly prepared very well," Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said.

"A lot of planning has gone into this, and I think it has paid off."

Coates is undoubtedly correct.

While it is natural that officials should preach caution before the event, they have been genuinely surprised by the results.

"You always hope for the best, you never lose faith in your athletes," said AOC director of sport Craig Phillips.

"But this has been right up to our best expectations and maybe even a bit better."

Australia finished fourth on the medal tally which wasn't quite as high as the third place in Melbourne in 1956 and equal to Sydney, but on a per-capita basis it finished second to the Bahamas.

To at least one outside observer, the reason is simple - money.

The German news agency DPA wrote that the $100 million-or-so the government annually tips into the Australian Institute of Sport meant the medal haul was a case of getting what you paid for.

"Australia slings heaps of money at its Olympic athletes and secures medals in return," DPA said.

"It's a simple enough equation that explains how a country of just 20 million people is in fourth place in the medal tally at the Athens Games."

The population part of the equation can be misleading.

Australia fielded the second biggest team of the Games behind the United States, which could mean it finished somewhere near its rightful place.

If there is one sport that made the difference, it was cycling.

From a one gold medal in Sydney, the team produced six in Athens.

And if there was one cyclist to be singled out it is Ryan Bayley.

The 22-year-old from Perth became the king of the track at the Olympic velodrome with his dynamic wins in the sprint and the keirin.

He and Ian Thorpe are the standout performers in the Australian team.

If their races were to be run again a dozen times over, the result would be the same every time.

Fittingly, Thorpe won Australia's first gold medal of the Games with a repeat of his 400m freestyle victory in Sydney.

In winning the 200m, he also inflicted the only individual defeat of the Games on the American star Michael Phelps.

Australia also came away from the Games in possession of a couple of world records.

Jodie Henry set a new mark in the semi-final of the 100m freestyle before going on to win the final and the women's 4x100m freestyle relay also won in world record time.

Two others on the cycling track went to Anna Meares in the time trial and the men's team pursuit.

Along with Petria Thomas who won the 100m butterfly, Henry took home the most gold medals in the Australian team, one each in individual competition and two in relays.

One of the reasons for conservative pre-Games predictions was the trend for host nations to excel, as Australia certainly did in Sydney.

Another was the retirement after the Sydney Games of a number of athletes, in particular from the water polo and women's hockey teams.

Neither won gold medals here.

Cathy Freeman's momentous victory had no comparative success in Athens.

That hope disappeared when Jana Pittman had an additional obstacle placed before her in the 400m hurdles.

Her damaged knee threatened to put her out of the Games, although she probably got as many headlines for her injury as she would have for a gold medal.

The three-Games run also came to an end in the equestrian three day event, archery just missed the target, the sailors didn't find the right wind and there was no repeat of the taekwondo gold won in Sydney.

While the medal count is higher in Athens, the spread is narrower.

Where 11 different sports won gold medals in Sydney, only six delivered this time.

At the same time, some who failed four years ago, came good in Athens, like rowing.

But with 13 medals between them swimming and cycling proved the mainstay of the Australian success.

Australians have won almost 40 per cent of all the swimming gold medals awarded in Olympic history. They more than maintained the average here.

The real reasons behind Australia's comparatively disproportionate success could never be nailed down.

While retirements certainly occurred after Sydney, many younger athletes will have benefitted from the extra funds and attention given to so many sports in the lead up to 2004.

Those benefits may well have translated into success in Athens.

Money, as already suggested, has undoubtedly provided opportunity that doesn't exist in other countries - and which didn't exist in Australia before 1976.

A gold medal count of zero at the Montreal Games that year prompted then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to establish the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS).

The AIS has since established an infrastructure that is geared to delivering Olympic gold medals - and the occasional cricketer and squash player.

One reason for the willingness of successive Australian governments to tip money into sport is the connection between the success of national teams to political approval ratings.

That theory will have a timely test with Prime Minister John Howard choosing the final day of the Games to announce an election.

The German agency that suggested Australia "bought" a lot of its gold medals also made the comparisons between the AIS and the old sporting regimes of the the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

But when countries like Germany have a similar system and Great Britain through its recently instituted national lottery do much the same thing, such criticisms seem hollow.

What is clear is that both those countries, and many more with vastly greater populations than Australia's, did considerably less well at the Olympic Games.

They can make as many excuses as they like, they'll still be welcome at the Aussie celebration party.

Congrats, MOU. (unfortunaly the same as at the Worldcup in Febuary) Croatia wins with 24:26.

Silver
Germany


Bronze

Russia

1. Duje Draganja, 50 meters freestyle swimming