Perhaps the decline in Australia's ranking in sports is due to the fact that Australians are growing up. They are becoming aware that sport should be fun and is not a thing to get excited about by watching somebody else doing it. Instead of spending money on training elite athletes in the Institute of Sport to get meaningless gold medals Australia might do better to get out of the Olympics and all other international competition, close down the Institute of Sport and encourage all children and adults who wish to do so to engage in sports by having adequate facilities in neighborhoods.

One meaning of sport is fun, and that is all it should be.

david f

Encouraging news, soon perhaps the majority of Australians won't give a rat's.

Agree completely, sport is participatory, anyone who thinks that gold medals are significant is welcome to spend their own money, not the taxpayers.

david f

Agreed, who gives a rat's. I can think of a thousand more socially useful ways to spend taxpayers' money. Those people who regard gold medals as a measure of national prestige are welcome to use their own funds.
If the British have contracted the East German disease, it's their problem.

I can't cite a source so you'll have to take my word for it (or dispute it - the choice is yours), but I once read an article that discussed the effect of hosting the Olympics on sporting achievement. It seems that in the year of hosting the Olympics, and in the Olympiad to follow, host nations tend to do very well. They then drop off.

Obviously, there are a few reasons for this. One is that we pump money (ridiculously large sums of the stuff) into sport in the leadup to our home games. Nobody wants to be the host who loses all the time! Another is that there is increased interest and a spike in national pride, especially where sport is concerned.

GB had a bumper year in 2012, what with the Olympics, Wiggins, a Jubilee, the recent royal wedding ... for the first time in a long time (at least according to my Pommy rellies) it was really a great time to be British.

Time will tell whether or not this continues or, like Australia, there is a form slump to come.

I appreciate the point that is raised in the posts before me - that sport should be a leisure activity, and should be participatory rather than all about winning. While I think there's more to it - there's much to be gained from sporting success - I would like to think that the taxpayers' money that was once poured into sport is now being poured into something more useful. The governments we've had for the past few years - present government included - make me doubt that. While sport is big business and can be profitable for some, taxpayers are rarely the winners in that game.