Olympic success is cyclical. No team or nation can win everything all the time. While the nature of the cycle varies depending on investment, structures, talent, good fortune and innumerable other factors, success on the grandest sporting stage tends to naturally ebb and flow (with the exception, perhaps, of the American women’s basketball team – who have won successive gold medals since 1996, although even they were pushed by France on Sunday).
All of which means Australia’s golden performance in Paris, the nation’s best ever Olympics, raises intriguing questions about the near-term future of the team. Is this the pinnacle, with (relative) disappointment at coming Games inevitable? Or is this the new benchmark for a nation punching well above its weight?
First, a quick recap. In Paris, Australia won 18 gold medals – one better than the prior joint best performances at Athens two decades ago and Tokyo three years ago. Seven gold medals came from the pool, a typical strength of the Australian program. Three apiece came in cycling and canoeing (the latter all from the Fox family), while Australian athletes won both the men’s and women’s park skateboarding. Gold medals in athletics, sailing and tennis rounded out the haul. The final tally also included 19 silver medals and 16 bronze medals, for a total of 53 medals, behind only Sydney 2000 for medals won.
The gold rush saw Australia end the Games in fourth on the medal table, the nation’s joint best finish – level only with the 1956 Olympics at home in Melbourne. It is a significant improvement on recent Olympics: the Australians ranked sixth in Tokyo, eighth in London 12 years ago, and 10th at Rio in 2016.
Triumph in Tokyo and near-perfection in Paris has set the Australian team up for a potentially golden decade ahead. Los Angeles will host the next Games, before a home Olympics in Brisbane in 2032. The Melbourne Games in 1956 was at the time Australia’s best Olympics, with more than double the number of golds previously won. That trend continued at Sydney 2000: a new benchmark Olympics for Australia, until that was bettered four years later. Such strong performances in Paris therefore bode well with a home Games on the horizon.
Indeed, an analysis of Summer Olympics outcomes from 1952 to 2012 found that, on average, hosts increased their gold medal count by 10 and their overall medal count by 20 on home soil. While there is no settled view on the causal effect of hosting the Games for medal chances, a combination of guaranteed qualification in team events and certain individual sports, the home crowd advantage and the typical high performance funding boost all likely contribute.
The federal government funds the lion’s share of Australia’s Olympic success – somewhere to the tune of half a billion dollars annually. Most of this money goes to the Australian Sports Commission, which distributes much of it directly to sports via its two arms: Sport Australia and the Australian Institute of Sport. As ASC chief executive Kieren Perkins said on Friday, “no one has contributed to Australia’s success in Paris more than the Australian taxpayer”.
With Brisbane eight years away, the funding has already ramped up: in June, the government announced a significant boost in high performance spending. In recent years, the way in which sport has been funded has also evolved: with a focus on guaranteed, cycle-by-cycle funding, and dedicated support for training and wellbeing, for example, rather than ad hoc funding which previously fluctuated every year. The government has also recently committed $250m to upgrade the AIS headquarters in Canberra.
But for all that Olympic glory depends on funding, structures and strategies, at the end of the day it comes down to individual athletes in clutch moments. Take away Jess Fox, Kaylee McKeown and Ariarne Titmus, and Australia is suddenly five gold medals down – possibly even six, accounting for Titmus’s clinical anchor leg in the relay. Twelve gold medals is nothing to sneeze at – an improvement on eight at both London 2012 and Rio 2016 – but well below the heights of Sydney, Athens, Beijing and Tokyo.
In Paris, when it mattered most, Australia’s athletes came through. Think Arisa Trew’s gold medal-winning performance in her final attempt in the skateboarding; the men’s team pursuit squad that traded an advantage with arch rivals Great Britain which was at times barely a handful of milliseconds before coming out on top; or McKeown, the swim star touched behind her rival at the final turn in both the 100m and 200m backstroke, only to win by a few tenths of a second in both.
The reason the Olympics are so compelling, leaving millions around the world enraptured, is because those split-second moments are inherently unpredictable. Trew stuck the landing on some unthinkable aerial tricks in Paris; on another day she lands awkwardly and comes off the board and settles for bronze. Before the British track team unravelled in the final lap, the difference between the teams was so infinitesimally small that the aerodynamic upside of either team’s socks could have made the difference. And rerun McKeown’s duel in the pool with American rival Regan Smith and on a different day Smith hangs on for gold.
The pathway towards Brisbane 2032 looks bright, after a record-breaking Paris performance. But whether 2024 represents the pinnacle, or just a basecamp for higher heights, will turn on mere milliseconds in four and eight years’ time. That is why the Games are so addictive – even the Olympics’ cyclical nature can be bent in the moments that matter.
