chris955

Sorry, you must have missed where I said 'sometimes'

commonwealth

I hope the Govt will NOT divert taxpayers money to fund elite athletes just for the sake of medal pride. It's a flawed approach to sports development.

I hope instead the money be used to fund grassroots sports programs.

chris955

I do agree with that, exactly as they have been doing here with great results.

commonwealth

really?

Loch Lomond

Woo Hoo Australia has a second Gold medal, now in 16th position.

Zen10

I agree. The money is totally unnecessary and an excuse. There are gold medal winners from countries with no state let alone state funding.

JoeBloggs80

Not really. There has been massive investment focused directly onto performaing in these games which has of course been a huge success.

Sadly the tory selling of hundreds of school sports fields and axing of multiple youth programmes means the next generation are unlikely to hit these heights again.

Zen10

Like I said, why is it an English kid needs a multi-million pound facility to get gold, but a kid from Ethiopia needs just his legs and the right attitude?

JoeBloggs80

I guess you're talking about long distance running which is taken extremely seriously in many african countries and seen by many as their ticket out to glory. The sheer numbers and passion for running in places like that I guess produce real champions.

Many of the sports we've excelled in, parrtcularly cycling and rowing, have been achieved with big investment in state of the art facilities and coaching.

Without that investment we would probably still be around 10th/12th in the medal table as we were for basically the history of the olypmis in the 20th century.

moneypenny20

I think your 6 should be the other way up

Amazulu

GB was in the same situation in the mid-90s (1 Gold in Atlanta) as Australia is now. This was only solved with serious taxpayer funded investment - and now you see the rewards.

Spend big, win big. Probably not the way it should be but there it is.

ozzieeagle

It's probably a major sign of respect to Australia, how noticeable that they've done so badly in this years Olympics. Aus will obviously bounce back to their rightful place fairly quickly.

KJCherokee

If the medal tally was better defined Australia would be higher up.

For example, if a gold was 3 points, a silver 2 and a bronze 1, Australia would have 38 points and be in 9th position, with NZ in 18th!

DeadVim

If gold was worth 1 point, silver 146 and bronze 10 Oz would be sorted.

But they ain't.

Zen10

At this point we should all spare a thought for poor Uzbekistan, coming in 61st with one bronze, awarded for their performance in the Hiding from the Soviet Tanks event.