Aussie bid for top five at 2012 Games - 'Not Sensible' - Report

Australia's bid to be among the top five medal winners at the London 2012 Games is "not sensible" an independent review reported as it rejected calls for a multi-million dollar boost for elite sports.

The government-commissioned report rejected the Australian Olympic Commission's push for an extra 100 million dollars (93 million US) a year to attain its goal and said the money would be better spent on sports which were popular with the public.

"The panel does not believe that the medal count is an appropriate measure of Australian performance or that top five is a sensible target," the report said.

Australia's Olympic record peaked at the Sydney Games in 2000 when the home team won 58 medals, placing it in fourth position.

Four years later in Athens the medal haul was 49, and in Beijing in 2008 it was 46, prompting Olympic officials to argue for more funding to interrupt the slide.

But the review, led by businessman David Crawford, said that the funding imbalance between Olympic and non-Olympic sports needed to be examined, and more emphasis placed on those sports which were popular within the community.

"The bias towards funding Olympic sports leads to outcomes that make little strategic sense for Australia," it said.

"For example, more government funds are provided for archery than cricket, which has more than 100 times the number of participants.

"Water polo receives as much high performance and Australian Institute of Sport funding as golf, tennis and lawn bowls combined, even though these sports can rightly claim to be whole of lifetime sports and significant contributors to the Australian government's preventative health agenda."

The report said Australians were very interested in cricket, golf, surfing and the various football codes, but that a discussion was needed on which sports carried the national ethos.

"Swimming, tennis, cricket, cycling, the football codes, netball, golf, hockey, basketball, surfing and surf lifesaving are among the most popular sports in Australia, a part of the national psyche," it said.

But it said if the country was interested in promoting health through sport, then money would be better spent on average participants than on "a small group of elite athletes who will perform at that level for just a few years."

The government response to the report is expected in early 2010.