More money for the AOC?

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates has made a suggestion in response to Australia's relatively  poor performance at the London Olympics, by adopting one of the recommendations in the recent Crawford Report into sports funding here. 

It was a report his organisation was critical of and succeeded in getting buried as it was a threat to gov funds being spent on elite Olympic athletes. The report (from what I can gather) basically says that gov money should be spread more widely in the community and not just on a few medal hopes in the Olympics every 4 years. Like getting kids in school sports, funding local sports at the grass roots more, things like that I guess. Sort of a bit blasphemous for the AOC which currently gets bazillions.

Now the chief sports columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald  has come out swinging at Coates. However unlike some products of the AOC's massive funding to a select few, there have been no broken windows involved, tantrums, or being as pissed as a fart (all whilst representing Australia on the other side of the world). It instead involves simply the application of free speech as a published opinion piece in the newspaper. Reading some of the comments below it, I reckon this guy's struck a bit of a nerve here.

This was the John Coates who was dragged before that inquiry, despite the quasi-diplomatic immunity claimed by International Olympic Committee grandees during their luxurious jaunts across the planet.

The same man whose organisation either cannot, or will not, justify the benefits its generous funding provides the broader community, beyond spurious notions such as the Olympic ''feelgood factor'', ''international prestige'' and the chest-beating contests with other nations similarly obsessed with the medals table.

The man whose organisation eventually delivered a 229-page submission to that inquiry that was little more than a longwinded and costly wish list on behalf of elite performers. The AOC's untested, perhaps even self-deluded, claims about its impact on grassroots sports were echoed in London by the Australian team's deputy chef de mission Kitty Chiller. In defending Australia's performance, Chiller said: ''There's thousands of kids running around the backyard because of Cathy Freeman. Thousands on a bike because of Cadel Evans.''
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Apart from some tinkering with the ASC administration, through which Olympic funding is channelled, the Crawford Report was torpedoed. It was a victim of the AOC's aggressive, self-protective lobbying, and opportunistic politicians; the type who can stare down a foreign despot, yet - as the soccer World Cup bid fiasco also proved - go weak at the knees at the sight of a green and yellow tracksuit.

Indeed, for its impertinence - Coates grandiosely referred to the Crawford Report as ''well-meaning'' - the AOC was rewarded with a generous funding increase, taking to $170 million the amount spent on elite athletes by the federal Government each year. Without anything so inconvenient as a cost-benefit analysis required.

Like its predecessors, the federal government has treated expenditure on Olympic sports mostly as an expensive photo opportunity, rather than a means of tackling important health issues. The sight of Olympic blogger and occasional federal Sports Minister Kate Lundy, cheering and tweeting her heart out in London, does little to suggest that will change.

In the thrall of the Olympic movement, what chance she will take a copy of the Crawford Report out of the bottom drawer, dust it down and implement findings that have a far greater chance of increasing grassroots participation than throwing yet more money at the AOC poobahs?
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I think people are just sick of the AOC and it's bottomless money pit. Especially when we get the spectacle of immature spoilt brats that have been on parade in London. They keep saying how bad Australia's done this games, but seriously the reality is that we're only about 23 million people here. I think we're currently 11th on the medal table, for the whole world. I wouldn't call that a bad effort at all. 

And so what if we were 20th even, what does it matter? Honestly I don't give a flying fuck about the medal table, and the only thing that's been remotely inspiring in these games is to see wanking brats go down. Hardly worth all the taxpayers money spent on it though. We are right as citizens here in demanding some sort of accountability for the obscene amount of taxpayers money the AOC squanders on these legends of their own minds. How many hoops have I had to jump through just to get a few dollars out of the gov for assistance (or even access to my own Superannuation money to retire debt)? But as soon as someone can swim fast they get catapulted into the Australian Institute of Sports (AIS) and get treated like gods gift to Australians. I'm not the only one, Australains have a right to be angry about this.  

Australia is a diverse nation. It's not all about Olympic medals.