AIS chief Peter Conde says the Brisbane Olympics provides Australia with a major opportunity to develop a sustainable sporting legacy which underpins the country long after the 2032 Games.
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The Brisbane Olympics, awarded to the Queensland capital earlier this week, will follow on from the Australian Sports Commission's Sport 2030 national plan, which aims to reduce physical inactivity in the country by 15 per cent.
Part of the blueprint of Australia's athletic future involves the National High Performance Sport Strategy 2024, being delivered by the AIS to improve athlete pathways and wellbeing.
As the AIS celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, Conde said the institute had a massive role to play in preparing Australia for its third Summer Olympics.
"It's very unusual to have an 11-year runway with which to build all the legacy that we really want to build, it's not just about 2032 it's about what happens after that and our ability to put in place things that are sustainable for the future," Conde said.
"For us and for the entire sporting system, 2032 is a massive boost and really will provide a lot of focus and a lot of impetus for the ability of sport to deliver what it can deliver, all the way through from its impact on the community, participation, or impact on obesity, mental health, all of those things, all the way through to the high performance.
"When we talk about the AIS we talk about its leadership role in the high performance sector through our national high performance sport strategy our leadership of the National Institute Network, our collaboration with the national sporting organisations. There's a massive leadership role that we play there."
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Despite the Covid pandemic, the AIS has still held 120 camps in Canberra this year across 26 sports, and was used by several athletes as a base in the build up to this year's delayed Tokyo Games.
Discussions with the Federal Government remain ongoing as to a possible funding injection which would breathe new lift into the Canberra facilities, some of which have not been updated since the AIS opened in 1981.
"We're in dialogue with the government about revitalising the campus and that's a decision the government will have to make," Conde said.
"The role of the campus is a really important one, but it's an important one in the context of a more decentralised system than what we had back in the 80s and 90s.
"What we had through 2019 [before the pandemic] was considerable growth in the use of the AIS campus to do the things that are not readily done elsewhere.
"To bring people to an environment where they can live together, eat together, train together, go to the gym together, be involved in the recovery services, have all those things all in one place, that you simply can't do anywhere else because you don't have the accommodation to start with.
"We saw very considerable growth in that and a lot of that was about really offering a unique suite of services and building the value proposition to sport, helping the sports plan camps et cetera.
"Of course the travel restrictions around Covid through 2020 and to some extent through 2021 have put a little bit of a brake on some of that. The campus does continue to play an important role."