What India can learn from the Australian model of treating sport as an industry

One of the words to describe India’s performance at the 2018 Commonwealth Games is, comprehensive. With 66 medals – 26 of which were gold outnumbering the silver and bronze – India finished third in the medals tally, behind the usual suspects Australia (198) and England (136).

Although not the best-ever medal haul, the Gold Coast Games heralded a new breed of young champions. But while the third place was perhaps on par with expectations, the difference in the number of medals between the top two is a number that sticks out.

Both Australia and England follow a policy of funding podium success, which puts more money into only those sports considered the best bets for medals, a system that has worked well for both nations largely.

In Australia, the model was called the ‘Winning Edge’ Policy, but was criticised after it didn’t get the desired results at the Rio Olympics, eventually being rebranded.

But the medal rush was back in Gold Coast where the hosts finished an expected first with 80 gold medals and 59 each of silver and bronze (105 were won by women while 89 were won by men and four were mixed team events.) More importantly, to finish so comprehensively ahead of England, who had topped the table at Glasgow in 2014, was an achievement many Australians celebrated, giving credence to the targeted funding policy.

The idea of funding podium success is something the Australian Sports Commission has believed in from the start, when the body was founded as a response to the poor display at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

“There aren’t enough funds to go around so we actually fund for podium success, we look at sports where we can be or are most successful and invest there. I think Australia is very egalitarian. We believe in fairness when it comes to spreading those resources. But at the end of the day we fund podium success,” Kate Palmer, the first female chief executive of the ASC, told a group of Indian journalists on a sports diplomacy visit on the side-lines of the Gold Coast Games.

“If you can’t be successful doesn’t mean you can’t participate. We also fund for community access to sporting infrastructure,” she added.

Funding priorities

From an Indian perspective, such a model raises many questions. While the staggered funding system is also in practice here – with games like badminton and shooting drawing maximum funding – it is not as cast iron. Apart from sustainability in an economy like India, the big question is whether it will help game development.

James Ferguson, the former CEO of the ASC who is widely regarded as the man behind Australia’s sporting turnaround, believes it would, creating a robust system.

“No elite sport system can concentrate on all sports because there are too many of them and not enough resources. To be successful it is essential to concentrate on those sports which have the best potential for further development,” he said in an interaction in Brisbane.

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Ferguson was in charge of Australian sport during the period that saw them move from 15th on the overall medal tally at the 1988 Seoul Olympics to fourth at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. He has also worked with other developing countries such as South Africa and a few Indian states to establish a sport system.

“In 1981, Australia started with seven sports and concentrated on developing coaches and a group of athletes who were given scholarships and accommodation.

“Gymnastics, for example, in 1981 wasn’t a big sport, we were ranked 25 in the world. But through talent identification we got a group of young female gymnasts and they were trained and by Barcelona 1992, we were seventh in the world,” he explained.

While the sports program is a lot more decentralised now, the principal remains the same – identify the sports with potential and develop them.

Sports as an industry

Palmer sees the Sports Commission as an industry, where her role is to create the best product with the investment she has. Contrary to popular belief, even Australia does not have unlimited funds to pump into sports, despite their evident domination in certain fields.

“My job is to make sure we use the funding that the government gives us to get the outcomes. It is about investing where it counts. My job is almost like an industry body, look at the participation that comes and the performance that comes and look at how we make our industry stronger and sustainable so that it can stand on its own two feet and not have to rely on government funding too much,” she explained.

India has a markedly different ecosystem for sports currently. The ASC is a statutory body and while receives most of its funding from government sources, it is established by an independent board and has an independent workforce who are not public servants. In Germany, this job is done by the confederation of sports, in other countries it is run by an Olympic Committee.

The National Sports Development Fund would be the Indian equivalent of the ASC which was established in 1998. Its role includes administering funds, training coaches, maintaining infrastructure, supplying sports equipment and the likes. However, this body is still in conjunction with the Sports Ministry, not independent.

Need for better planning

The Olympic Task Force, formed in 2017 and headed by only individual gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, has proposed a parallel, independent body. Calling it the Empowered Steering Committee for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Task Force the body can “drive all the initiatives being recommended and be responsible for the proper preparation for the Games.” It also called for setting up a new legal entity to manage Olympic preparation, which would replace the steering committee once it is formed.

However, the parallel body is not seen as a priority. With the number of athletes and state bodies in India, there are challenges of infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, which are the bigger concern at present. This means heavy investment, the kind that India cannot always provide.

But Ferguson believes that pumping money into Olympic-level facilities is not a pre-requisite for building a sound sport system.

“It is a misconception to believe you need a lot of money. Of course you need some money but what is important is what you do with the money. This gets back to targeting because nobody has enough, and this is what we did in Australia. We had to make do with what you have and this makes you more careful and use it in the best possible way,” he said.

He also suggested a two-pronged approach post targeting that can help develop a long-term sustainable model for sport.

“If you want to have good system, you must have good coaches, if you want good coaches then you must have a system to educate and develop them. It’s not an expensive exercise to develop the level of coaching quality. And while it is beneficial to import coaches,their job should also be to train local coaches.

“Secondly, look at the servicing requirements of the athletes: physiotherapy, strength and conditioning, nutrition. If you are starting to develop a system, this branches of sport science are important, worry about bio-mechanics and physiology later,” he explained.

No quick fix

Other than investment at the base of the pyramid, the other crucial aspect in creating this is the timelines for the directions.

Australia starts preparing for Olympic Games six years before, that is two years before the first Games. But the same expectation is tough in India, given the tendency to demand quick results in terms of medals.

“It takes a long time, each sport can be developed on a different time scale depending on its world rankings. If you take hockey where India is a strong country, you could develop it quickly, but volleyball, basketball will take longer. I would think you shouldn’t expect dramatic results in anything less than 10 years but you would expect to see some results in a few years,” said Ferguson.

The results are slowly coming in for India, even if not at the Olympic level. But there is a long way still to go. Ten years seems like a long time but the Task Force is in place with an eye on not just Tokyo 2020, but the next two Olympics as well.

Even if not with a model as straight jacketed, nurturing a few sports with potential is a model India could benefit greatly from to build on the momentum created by the performance of the youngsters so far this year.

Disclosure: This reporter traveled to Australia on a trip sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.