The results of a survey of Australians' attitudes towards funding of Olympic sport, released yesterday, show beating Team Great Britain on its home turf in four years is almost as important to Australians as winning more gold medals.

The Sweeney Sports report on the Beijing Olympic Games also shows Australians overwhelmingly believe a strong Olympic performance raises the overall sense of national optimism, with 63 per cent agreeing our athletes' success spills over into other areas.

Worryingly though, the report also showed 41 per cent of people believe government funding known to be about half that provided by the UK to its Olympians is being reflected in performances.

In Beijing Australia underperformed in some of its traditional strength areas, notably men's swimming and cycling, where the British team dominated.

Sweeney Sports general manager Todd Deacon said the survey of more than 1000 people across all state capitals and Canberra proved Australia's national identity was closely intertwined with its sporting prowess.

''For a fairly small nation relative to the world, if we're performing well on the world stage in sport it is seen to flow through to other aspects of business or even how we perform as a country in other areas,'' he said.

''Our results show that for the majority of Australians, Olympic success is meaningful to them.''

A perceived lack of government funding in comparison to other medal tally heavyweights such as the US, China and more recently Britain, has been a hot issue since Beijing.

While most respondents said the Australian performance had matched their expectations, Deacon said there was public concern the same wouldn't be true in London.

''Leading into the last Games we started seeing a number of coaches leave Australia because they've been lured by significantly higher amounts of money in China or the UK or elsewhere.

''Our performance in Beijing was probably a little better than what people might have expected. But looking forward one of the things which we're starting to see, and possibly more pronounced around sports such as cycling or swimming, is that in four years time people think our results might not be quite so good.''

Providing adequate funding for swimming, which produced 40 per cent of Australian medals in China, is certain to be one of the greatest areas of concern for the Federal Government.

The Government is in the process of reviewing the funding structures of Australian sport.