There have been lots of excuses and blame thrown around in the past week about who is to answer for our somewhat dismal showing at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Can we put it down to lazy athletes without the work ethic of past generations? Lack of government funding? The easy lifestyle that Australia offers? I think it's a combination of all these things. That and, in many instances, we just weren't good enough on the day.

But perhaps Coates has it right. Perhaps we need to look at our next generation of athletes before they even know they're athletes. The motto of these Games was ''Inspire a Generation'', a philosophy that started at the opening ceremony when the six young athletes lit the Olympic cauldron. It was inspiring.

And it's inspiring too, to hear of athletes competing in London talk about how their journey started, watching Cathy Freeman or Ian Thorpe or Kathy Watt achieve Olympic success.

What worries me, as a proud sporting Australian, and, yes, as a proud sporting parent, is that there seems to be an ever-increasing emphasis on the idea that winning is a bad thing.

I blame this generation of parents who fill every layer of the pass-the-parcel parcel with some trinket so as not to upset little Xavier who might not be the last child in the circle to be left holding the parcel when the music stops.

Sure, participation is a wonderful thing. And, if we're being sensible about it, participation is what it's all about at the primary school sport level, but why should we smother any competitive edge a 10-year-old might have to whoop his classmate in the 100 metres at the school athletics carnival? And revel in his success when he does?

Australian children have two hours of compulsory sport a week. Sure, many of them are doing additional hours before and after school and on weekends. But should some of that responsibility fall back on to the school?

While I'm not suggesting we force children into state-run ''athletic academies'' like they do in China - and read the touching story of ''a slender girl called Cloud'' who was whipped off to the Weifang City Sports School after a stranger came to her village and took detailed measurements of her shoulder width, thigh length and waist circumference ''and announced she would have the honour of serving her motherland as a weight lifter'' (look up Time magazine, China's sports school on the internet) - but Coates is right, we need to look at primary school sport. For so many reasons.

There's a couple of primary schools near where I live and even pre-children it would make me sad when I'd walk past them and see classes outside doing ''sport''. On more than one occasion there'd be a teacher sitting under a tree while the kids self-managed a scratch game of soccer, one where the boys, who were playing soccer outside school hours anyway, would dominate and there'd be other children standing around in groups not even participating. Or there'd be games of tag, or stuck in the mud, or some politically correct version of British Bulldog where everyone was a winner. I know I'm generalising. There are plenty of primary school teachers doing a fantastic job on the sporting field. But they're also looking after literacy and numeracy, music, art, science, health, religion, languages and managing the behaviour of 30-odd nine-year-olds while they're at it. It's a tough gig.

One solution would be to put a dedicated sports teacher into every primary school in Australia. Surely that can't be too hard? Not only would the children be getting the best sporting instruction, class teachers could be freed up to dedicate more time to the rest of the curriculum, which actually matters even more.

I'm not saying that schools should be providing the base for specific sporting skills like swimming backstroke or drag flicking a hockey ball or riding a BMX bike. What they should be doing is providing instruction in the basic skills needed for a wide range of sports.

Kids can't throw any more, or run, or, in many cases ride a bike. Once, when covering a junior cricket event, I cried when I saw how few of the children could throw a ball. And then I was angry.

Sure, not every one of these children would grow up to play cricket for Australia, or even any type of cricket, but the achievement of learning a skill, even one as basic as throwing, is a fine experience for a child.

There's nothing as pleasing as watching a kid race off on his bike for the first time without training wheels, or when she bowls a ball on the stumps in a game of backyard cricket or when they swim across the pool without stopping. Even I can remember the first time I did that and I'm happy to admit I'm the worst swimmer in the world.

And from that comes the joy of winning. I've written before about what sport can teach children: teamwork, grace, humility, competitiveness. Winning is a glorious thing. Norm Hart, of the Australian Primary Principals Association, was a detractor of John Coates during the week, saying he thought schools were doing a fine job, and then something along the lines of how children are all about the performance and not the results.

He's obviously never been to any sporting event involving any child older than about five. For the kids it's all about the winning - sure, they might have forgotten about it before you've even got home, and not dwelled on it like some sad old 45-year-old woman whose hockey team has only managed two wins, two wins, all season - but in that moment it is about the winning.

And if Australia is to do better in Rio and beyond we need to start raising generations who want to win. But generations who also realise that winning is not easy, that it's not something you're entitled to and not something to be taken for granted.

And perhaps that will be the hardest job of all.

Twitter: karenhardy@CT