THEY play hard, they play often, and they play to win. Australian sports
teams win more than their fair share of titles, demolishing rivals with seeming
ease. And Australians top the rankings in numerous individual sports, from
swimming to golf and squash to triathlon. How do they do it?
A big part of the secret is an extensive and expensive network of sporting
academies underpinned by science and medicine. For two decades Australia has
quietly invested in sports research and development, building a national system
that scoops up talent and turns it into victories. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a 20-year process
of working hands-on with coaches and athletes, developing research questions and
applying the answers back to coaching,鈥� says Peter Fricker, chief of sports
science at the Australian Institute of Sport.
It has certainly paid off. Since the national system was set up in 1981 (see
鈥淩ising from the ashes鈥�), the country鈥檚 medal tally at the summer Olympics
has soared from 9 in Moscow in 1980 to 58 in Sydney in 2000. Australia finished
fourth in the medals table鈥攁 remarkable achievement for a country with a
population of just 19.4 million. True, it had home advantage, which always seems
to help. But only the US, the Russian Federation and China won more medals.
Australia came in ahead of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Britain and
Canada鈥攔ich and populous nations that, all things being equal, should have
beaten it with ease.
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It鈥檚 not just in Olympic sports that Australians do well. Its teams are
reigning world champions at rugby league, rugby union, cricket one-day and test
match, netball and squash, and the men鈥檚 tennis team narrowly failed to win last
year鈥檚 Davis Cup.
Just 10 minutes鈥� drive from the centre of Canberra, sprawling across 65 leafy
hectares in a quiet suburban setting, is the nerve centre of this quest to be
best: a scattering of buildings, sports fields and parkland that makes up the
Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Here, 350 promising youngsters and
established pros live and train under the eyes of a legion of coaches and sports
scientists. Day in, day out they are prodded and poked, swabbed and videotaped,
watched and measured with an intensity more often associated with the space
programme. Another 250 established athletes regularly visit for training and
performance analysis. More than half of the Australian team at the 2000 games
were AIS athletes, including the iconic 400 metres champion Cathy Freeman.
Another body, the Australian Sports Commission, runs programmes of excellence
in 96 sports, from archery to wrestling, at 400 centres. At any time, 4500
sportsmen and women are under the watchful eye of the commission鈥檚 sports
scientists. On top of that, each state and territory has its own sports
institute, and the most populous state, New South Wales, has a further eight
regional academies. Each provides intensive coaching, training facilities and
nutritional advice.
More than 34,000 children, ranging in age from 8 to 16, pass through the
system every year. If you鈥檙e a young Australian and show talent in just about
any sport, you鈥檒l be spotted and signed up. It鈥檚 a national dragnet that helps
the country extract the most from its small population.
Inside the academies, science takes centre stage. The AIS employs more than
100 sports scientists and doctors, and collaborates with scores of others in
universities and research centres. AIS scientists work across a number of
sports, applying skills learned in one鈥攕uch as building muscle strength in
golfers鈥攖o others, such as swimming and squash. They are backed up by
technicians who design instruments to collect data from athletes. They all focus
on one goal: winning. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 waste our time looking at ethereal scientific
questions that don鈥檛 help the coach work with an athlete and improve
performance,鈥� says Fricker.
A lot of their work comes down to measurement鈥攅verything from the exact
angle of a swimmer鈥檚 dive into the pool to the second-by-second power output of
a cyclist. They then use this data to wring improvements out of their athletes.
The focus is on individuals: understanding how each athlete moves through the
water or swings a bat, then tweaking their technique to squeeze an extra
hundredth of a second here, an extra millimetre there. No gain is too small to
bother with. It鈥檚 the tiny, gradual improvements that add up to world-beating
results.
To demonstrate how the system works, Bruce Mason, head of the AIS
biomechanics department, shows off a 3D analysis tool being developed to study
swimmers. A wireframe model of a champion swimmer slices through the water, her
arms moving in slow motion. Looking side-on, Mason measures the distance between
strokes. Then, from above, he analyses how her spine swivels. From this, he
builds a biomechanical profile that coaches can use to help budding swimmers, or
study off-form swimmers to discover where their problems lie.
The data comes from an underwater filming system pioneered at the AIS. A
digital video camera mounted on a boom is immersed in the water alongside the
swimmer. Mason uses a hand-pushed dolly to shadow the swimmer up and down the
pool. Another camera films head-on. The output is linked with other
data鈥攖urn times, velocity, stroke length鈥攖hen analysed immediately
after each race.
Mason also developed the SWAN (SWimming ANalysis) system now used in
Australian national competitions. It collects images from digital cameras
running at 50 frames a second and breaks down each part of a swimmer鈥檚
performance into factors that can be analysed individually鈥攕troke length,
stroke frequency, average duration of each stroke, velocity, start, lap and
finish times, and so on. At the end of each race, SWAN spits out data on each
swimmer that coaches can use to pinpoint aspects of their performance that need
to improve.
鈥淭ake a look,鈥� says Mason, pulling out a sheet of data from a race at last
year鈥檚 short-course nationals in Perth. He points out the data on the swimmers
in second and third place, which shows that the one who finished third actually
swam faster. So why did he finish 35 hundredths of a second down? 鈥淗is turn
times were 44 hundredths of a second behind the other guy,鈥� says Mason. 鈥淚f he
can improve on his turns, he can do much better.鈥�
It鈥檚 the kind of accuracy that AIS scientists are bringing to a range of
sports. With the Cooperative Research Centre for Micro Technology in Melbourne,
they are developing unobtrusive sensors that can be embedded in an athlete鈥檚
clothes or running shoes to monitor heart rate, sweating, heat production or any
other factor that might have an impact on an athlete鈥檚 ability to win.
And there鈥檚 more to it than simply measuring performance. Fricker gives the
example of a couple of swimmers who were down with coughs and colds 11 or 12
times a year. 鈥淭hey鈥檇 have to be pulled out of the pool, couldn鈥檛 train for
three or four days, and would risk infecting other athletes,鈥� he says. These
swimmers almost always fell ill as their training regime intensified, and
quickly recovered when they stopped training. Could a test be found that would
allow coaches to predict an illness so that they could ease back on training
before it struck?
After years of experimentation, the AIS and the University of Newcastle in
New South Wales developed a test that measures how much of the immune-system
protein immunoglobulin A is present in athletes鈥� saliva. If IgA levels suddenly
fall below a certain level, training is eased or dropped altogether. Soon, IgA
levels start rising again, and the danger passes. Since the tests were
introduced, AIS athletes鈥攏ot just swimmers but those in all
sports鈥攈ave been remarkably successful at staying healthy. The institute
is now developing a portable test, and is studying ways of identifying which
athletes are prone to illness, so that their training can be tailored from day
one.
It may seem a small advance, but such details can make all the difference.
The reigning 1500 metre champion Sebastian Coe failed to qualify for the 1988
Olympics because of a respiratory infection, and more than 50 top athletes,
including American sprinter Carl Lewis, missed events in the 1992 games because
they fell ill at the wrong time. Had the test been available, they might have
been able to stay healthy enough to compete.
Target practice
But it鈥檚 not just about collecting data: it鈥檚 how you use the data too. Well
before a championship, sports scientists and coaches start to prepare the
athlete by developing a 鈥渃ompetition model鈥�, based on what they expect will be
the winning times. 鈥淵ou design a race model to make that time,鈥� says Mason. 鈥淎
start of this much, each free-swimming period has to be this fast, with a
certain stroke frequency and stroke length, with turns done within these times.鈥�
All the training is then geared towards making the athlete hit those targets,
both overall and for each segment of the race.
Techniques like this have transformed Australia into arguably the world鈥檚
most successful sporting nation. According to the latest figures from the
Australian Sports Commission, Australians hold number one rankings in 21 of 50
major sports, from golf to surfing, and top five rankings in a further 15.
Of course, there鈥檚 nothing to stop other countries copying鈥攁nd many
have tried. Six years ago the AIS unveiled coolant-lined jackets for endurance
athletes. At the Atlanta games in 1996 these shaved up to 2 per cent off
cyclists鈥� and rowers鈥� times. Now everyone uses them. The same has happened to
the 鈥渁ltitude tent鈥�, developed by the AIS to replicate the effect of altitude
training at sea level.
But Australia鈥檚 success story is about more than easily copied technological
fixes, and up to now no nation has replicated its all-encompassing system.
But some are getting there. Every researcher and sports official New
快猫短视频 spoke to nominated Britain as the hottest competitor. A funding
system set up in 1995, backed by 拢350 million of National Lottery money
plus 拢70 million a year from the government, means that Britain is now
spending three times as much as Australia. 鈥淭hey are putting big, big bucks into
sports science and sports medicine,鈥� says Fricker. 鈥淎nd they鈥檝e quite sensibly
recruited a lot of Australians with a 10 to 20-year history of the system here.鈥�
Dozens of people from the Australian sports system are taking up key positions
in Britain: examples include David Moffett, former head of Australia鈥檚 National
Rugby League, who started as chief executive of Sport England this month, and
former test wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh, for a decade director of the Australian
Cricket Academy and now director of the England and Wales Cricket Board鈥檚 new
National Academy.
鈥淭here鈥檚 going to be a lag time,鈥� Fricker says. 鈥淭hey have got to get that
expertise on board, create a sports system and have the scientists and the
doctors to service it.鈥� He says a good programme can deliver results in about
seven years, though some sports take 10 or 12.
If he鈥檚 right, British sports fans could soon be toasting the Australian
sports system instead of cursing it. Could a British team win the rugby union
world cup, or bring a tub-thumping haul of medals back from Athens in 2004?
Maybe even the Ashes could change hands one day.
鈥淵eah, we鈥檙e worried about the Brits,鈥� says Fricker. 鈥淏ut we are just going
to have to find new ways to stay ahead of the pack.鈥� Don鈥檛 bet on them losing
the edge.
It鈥檚 no surprise that Australia has built the world鈥檚 best sports development
system. 鈥淎ustralia鈥檚 national sport is winning,鈥� says John Daly, a sports
historian at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. 鈥淲e seem to believe
that success can help define our place in the world.鈥�
But it took a sporting disaster to make it happen. At the 1976 Olympics in
Montreal, Australia picked up just one silver medal and four bronzes鈥攊ts
worst performance in 40 years. There were calls for a public inquiry.
Prime minister Malcolm Fraser commissioned a report on sports development,
but shelved it on the ideological grounds that government had no role in funding
sport. Then came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Under pressure from Fraser,
many Australian athletes pulled out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest. The
depleted team won nine medals, including two gold, but the move damaged Fraser.
Facing an election, he finally committed to the funding of sport. Fraser was
re-elected, and the AIS opened in January 1981.