Future Support for Olympians: Factories, movies and sports science

Australian running coach Percy Cerutty prepared Herb Elliot for the 1960 Olympic Games without much external support. As a true amateur athlete, Elliot won an Olympic Gold Medal with a World Record time in the 1500m event. Australia won a total of eight Gold Medals but the Soviet Union with their government funded athletes won 43 Gold Medals.

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), opened in 1981 and, in many ways, emulated Soviet Union and East German medal winning factories complete with departments that focused on facilities, coach education, talent selection, and the secret weapon - sport science. At the AIS, the scientific disciplines of physiology, psychology, nutrition, biomechanics and sports medicine focused on themes believed to confer a performance advantage. Laboratories were built and athlete assessment methodologies were refined in hopes of finding a winning edge. However, in the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games something changed at the AIS. Funding opportunities became available for “special projects” specifically designed to help Olympic and Paralympic athletes win a medal. Funding was not directed towards improving Australia’s centralised athlete support infrastructure, but instead towards performance enhancement projects that were managed more like making a movie than refining a factory. High Performance Managers worked like Film Producers, Coaches worked like Film Directors, Athletes were treated like Actors and Sport Scientists embraced high tech solutions that could solve relevant challenges, much like a special effects studio in a big budget movie.

In the animal kingdom, the concept of symmorphosis suggests that biological systems should reflect an ‘economy of design’. An important question worth asking is, “Are today’s Olympic / Paralympic Institutes of Sport, originally modelled off of Soviet and East German Medal Winning Factories currently ideal for attracting the brilliant coaches, innovative sport scientists and talented athletes required to win?” Or is the organisational structure and methodology adopted by some of the world’s most successful film production companies more relevant? Perhaps medal winning factories are no longer a worthy analogy and instead coaches and sport scientist should be inspired by how talented teams work together to produce award winning movies.