‘Id’ Get Better Blocks In Denmark’ Says Aussie Matt Abood; Has AIS Lost ‘Winning Edge’?

World-Class Athletes are out, blazers and bureaucrats are in: that’s the overall impression given in a report by the Australian Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail that starts with these stark words: “Australia’s million dollar sporting factory is standing idle just 10 weeks out from the Rio Olympics. The Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra has just one Olympic-bound full-time resident on the eve of the Games.”

In a report by Jessica Halloran, the likes of sprinter Matt Abood, a member of the Australia 4x100m freestyle team tilting for the Olympic title,  struggle through bureaucracy and other barriers when it came to gaining access to $17m state-of-the-art, state-funded facilities, “while the blazer brigade of top sporting federations are receiving most of the cash” and the AIS is full of “school groups, junior development squads and government bureaucrats now use the pool and gym — most of them on generous salaries”

A panel including FFA chief David Gallop, AOC chief John Coates and retired champion basketballer Lauren Jackson, are due to meet for a brain-storming panel session on what’s gone wrong at what the Telegraph calls “the once thriving, now barren campus” in Canberra.

Nothing, is the answer from AIS director Matthew Favier, who defends the direction the institute has taken under his guidance and Australia’s Winning Edge (AWE) program in which the AIS dropped its scholarship program. Coates …

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