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Transcript form the report on 60 Minutes last week. The real reason why the British are now so competitive on the Sporting Stage after decades of Gashness.
LIZ HAYES: The Olympic countdown is on to London 2012. Coaches and athletes have just two years to ready themselves for the ultimate sporting glory. But this quest began much earlier. In almost every sport, including swimming, cycling and rowing, the coaches who've masterminded the next medal motza are Australian. Trouble is the stars they're creating won't be wearing the green and gold because they're all Poms. That's right, our best coaches have defected to our most bitter sporting enemy.
LIZ HAYES: How many Australian coaches do you have?
LORD MOYNIHAN: It's a good question - too many to count I'm glad to say.
LIZ HAYES: Lord Moynihan is Grand Poobah of the British Olympic Committee and he's laughing all the way to London's opening ceremony.
LIZ HAYES: You've fleeced us!
LORD MOYNIHAN: No, no, no. But we've benefited significantly, you know, across the sporting range. So, ah, I can't give you the number but I can tell you that they are greatly appreciated.
LIZ HAYES: I think it's called a "poach a coach" campaign that took place.
LORD MOYNIHAN: Yeah, no, I got that when I was down-under recently and ah, it isn't. You know the world now has recognised how important coaches are because Australia taught the world that.
LIZ HAYES: They were our glory days. Australia's obsession with national sporting success was backed by enthusiastic government policy. And the results were gold - a blueprint for success which turned out champions like Ian Thorpe and Cathy Freeman. But those days are gone.
LIZ HAYES: When we get to the Olympics in London in 2012, we're going to get a hiding.
JOHN COATES: We won't get a hiding.
LIZ HAYES: We'll get slapped.
JOHN COATES: We'll get a little slap.
LIZ HAYES: John Coates is head of the Australian Olympic Committee and helped develop our winning formula. What we proved was that medal success could be guaranteed - it just took strong government support and money, lots of money.
JOHN COATES: We've got ourselves to fourth and fifth in the world, having set those objectives in both the gold and the overall medal tally. The signs, though, are that we're being significantly outspent by Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany and we're slipping behind them, so, I'd say at this stage, unless there is additional funding and it should have come earlier than now, we're probably looking at somewhere between 8th and 10th.
LIZ HAYES: Is that embarrassing?
JOHN COATES: It's embarrassing if - when you know that we can do better.
LIZ HAYES: OK, so what has happened? Did somebody stop caring? Did somebody decide it didn't matter?
JOHN COATES: They've taken the eye off the ball, the Government has. The last significant increase in funding was in 1994,
LIZ HAYES: Meanwhile, British athletes are being showered in cash - a billion-dollar bonanza, direct from its national lotteries. That's more than double our Olympic budget. The Brits now have the best of everything - coaches, facilities, science and technology. But the key change is paying their stars big bucks to be full-time athletes.
MARK HUNTER: When I first came into the sport, you used to have to work and train. So you'd train before work, go to work, do your day's work and then train in the evening, so your day was pretty much taken up. But now we're able to actually have the full recovery so we can train more, more volume, more intensely and get the benefits from it.
LIZ HAYES: The result - 31-year-old rower Mark Hunter went from last place at the Athens Olympics in 2004 to a gold medal in Beijing four years later. The next goal is to blitz the Games on home turf in London and give the Aussies a flogging along the way. So does it feel really good to be able to slap the Australians?
MARK HUNTER: Yes. I think it - I actually do think Australia is more competitive of us. They look up to us and want to beat us at everything, where we just kind of really just stay relaxed and we want to beat everyone. Like, we're not just looking for one nation, although it's good to take the Aussies down when you know it's needed, and put them in their place, which is always good.
LIZ HAYES: How big a motivator is it for you to beat us?
LORD MOYNIHAN: Big-time, big-time. You ask the British public what are the two objectives for the Olympic Games and the first one they'll say is to to see the Union Jack go up that flagpole as many times as possible, to get gold medals and to really succeed. And the other is to beat the Aussies when they come over here.
LIZ HAYES: Three-times Olympian Katherine Grainger is Britain's queen of rowing and now earns a six-figure salary. Along with the cash, she's seen a new sporting pride sweep the country - a hope that Britain may finally shake its tag as a nation of also-rans. Well, you're no longer the underdog.
KATHERINE GRAINGER: No, I think sometimes we like to mentally think we might be, but I think if we just went along and just had a jolly good race, then it wouldn't be enough any more. People want to see us up there winning and that's what we want as well, so it's good for everyone.
LIZ HAYES: Australian rower Dan Noonan's hunger for victory is just as strong as his British rivals but, for this world champion, the dream sometimes takes a backseat to a drain. He pays the bills by working as a plumber.
LIZ HAYES: This is the other job, huh?
DAN NOONAN: Yes, that's right! This is the day job.
LIZ HAYES: When you're doing this, are you hating the fact you're not out on the water?
DAN NOONAN: Yeah, but, no, it would be good to be out on the water now. Definitely.
LIZ HAYES: On the water, 'Grandstand Dan' as they call him, puts on a good show. In Beijing, his quad scull team missed a medal by a third of a second.
LIZ HAYES: So when you're fixing that leaky tap or unblocking that drain, are you cursing?
DAN NOONAN: It is a little bit a little bit of a hard thing to swallow, yeah.
LIZ HAYES: Money makes a difference?
DAN NOONAN: It does, it does.
LIZ HAYES: If you had funds to train and not have to work, how much of a difference do you think that would make to you winning a medal?
DAN NOONAN: Well, I think it'd make a massive difference. When countries put a lot of money into their sport, their chosen sports, say within a year or two they're the ones on the dais and winning medals.
LIZ HAYES: And Dan knows first-hand the difference dollars make. His own cousin, Paul Thompson, was recruited by the Brits to coach the national rowing team.
LIZ HAYES: Is it hard to cross over to the "other side"?
PAUL THOMPSON: Yeah, absolutely.
LIZ HAYES: Was it?
PAUL THOMPSON: Yeah, absolutely.
LIZ HAYES: Already, Thompson and an army of fellow Australian coaches have produced a swag of Olympic medals for Britain.
PAUL THOMPSON: The Olympics is just getting more and more and more competitive. Athletes at that level, they're like gold dust, and the things that you build around them to allow them to to develop and perform, that's what you get to get the money for.
SHANE SUTTON: I would love to have been back in Australia, you know, leading your home nation into that stadium but, unfortunately, you know that, that opportunity never arose and so I will be there leading the Brits in.
LIZ HAYES: Shane Sutton is another Aussie defector. He coached Britain's cyclists to a stunning victory against us in Beijing, and plans to do so again in London.
SHANE SUTTON: I wasn't the most popular person in Australia, you know, and all the headlines were reading, you know, "Aussie leads Brits to gold medal haul" and, you know, I was rated one of the most hated men in Australia.
LIZ HAYES: And with our best coaches, Brits now get the best technology. Here, a pair of high-tech virtual reality goggles that feed real-time information to the rower. Blood samples taken and re-taken. Every scrap of information analysed and re-analysed as athletes are pushed to their limits. The Brits are totally unapologetic that their winning formula has come straight from Australia, out of John Coates's own textbook.
LORD MOYNIHAN: He taught us coaching is all. We've got some of the best coaches in the world now working with our athletes. He taught us about the importance of not just backing top athletes but backing squads. So, the base of the pyramid, as John would call it, is critically important.
LIZ HAYES: Bloody hell, he's told you the lot!
LORD MOYNIHAN: Yeah. Not everything!
LIZ HAYES: Lord Monahan says you told them how to do it.
JOHN COATES: I think he just read all the reports about what we did but he's um...
LIZ HAYES: You came up with this model, you told them how to do it.
JOHN COATES: Yes, certainly I've...
LIZ HAYES: In fact, he thanked you.
JOHN COATES: Did he? Yeah, he's always been somewhat arrogant.
LIZ HAYES: John Coates has begged for more Olympic funding. There's talk of a $30 million injection in the federal Budget - way short of what John Coates wants. But Sports Minister Kate Ellis must weigh up Coates's pleas against calls to direct funds to more community based sports, like football and cricket.
KATE ELLIS: He wants $114 million a year extra money. Currently, we fund Olympic and Para-Olympic sports about $74 million a year, so there is - that is obviously a huge increase - 160% increase in Olympic funding.
LIZ HAYES: Does that means he's not getting the money?
KATE ELLIS: And that means we have to balance - we have to balance those needs.
LIZ HAYES: Does that mean he's not getting the money?
KATE ELLIS: Well, I can't give any pre-Budget announcements at this point but what I will say is that I recognise the importance of the Olympics.
JOHN COATES: The Olympics is the biggest peacetime world event. It does have strategic, it does have diplomatic, it does have trade repercussions, apart from the importance to our nation in encouraging greater participation in sport.
LIZ HAYES: So ignore it at your peril?
JOHN COATES: I've said that to them.
KATE ELLIS: There is no question that there are other countries who are getting tougher, are getting more competitive and are taking the charge to Australia. I'm not for a moment saying that that's not occurring. That's why we need to work to make sure we stay in front of them.
LIZ HAYES: Well, it's one thing to have a crack at your dreams - it's another not to be able to achieve your dreams because the government was a bit of a tight arse.
KATE ELLIS: Well, that's true.
LIZ HAYES: There's no doubt Australia's Dan Noonan could do with a leg-up, but he's not complaining. A lack of money isn't going to take the shine off his quest for an Olympic medal. Britain's Mark Hunter, on the other hand, believes he's almost got his medal in the bag. And what's it going to take for us to beat you?
MARK HUNTER: I don't think you're going to. It's as simple as that really. It's too late.
LIZ HAYES: I'm already a loser and I haven't even been there yet?
MARK HUNTER: We'll see if you can. It would be interesting if you can, but I don't think you're going to.
LIZ HAYES: Dan, could you just, for me, go over there and wipe the smile off their face?
DAN NOONAN: Done!
LIZ HAYES: The Olympic countdown is on to London 2012. Coaches and athletes have just two years to ready themselves for the ultimate sporting glory. But this quest began much earlier. In almost every sport, including swimming, cycling and rowing, the coaches who've masterminded the next medal motza are Australian. Trouble is the stars they're creating won't be wearing the green and gold because they're all Poms. That's right, our best coaches have defected to our most bitter sporting enemy.
LIZ HAYES: How many Australian coaches do you have?
LORD MOYNIHAN: It's a good question - too many to count I'm glad to say.
LIZ HAYES: Lord Moynihan is Grand Poobah of the British Olympic Committee and he's laughing all the way to London's opening ceremony.
LIZ HAYES: You've fleeced us!
LORD MOYNIHAN: No, no, no. But we've benefited significantly, you know, across the sporting range. So, ah, I can't give you the number but I can tell you that they are greatly appreciated.
LIZ HAYES: I think it's called a "poach a coach" campaign that took place.
LORD MOYNIHAN: Yeah, no, I got that when I was down-under recently and ah, it isn't. You know the world now has recognised how important coaches are because Australia taught the world that.
LIZ HAYES: They were our glory days. Australia's obsession with national sporting success was backed by enthusiastic government policy. And the results were gold - a blueprint for success which turned out champions like Ian Thorpe and Cathy Freeman. But those days are gone.
LIZ HAYES: When we get to the Olympics in London in 2012, we're going to get a hiding.
JOHN COATES: We won't get a hiding.
LIZ HAYES: We'll get slapped.
JOHN COATES: We'll get a little slap.
LIZ HAYES: John Coates is head of the Australian Olympic Committee and helped develop our winning formula. What we proved was that medal success could be guaranteed - it just took strong government support and money, lots of money.
JOHN COATES: We've got ourselves to fourth and fifth in the world, having set those objectives in both the gold and the overall medal tally. The signs, though, are that we're being significantly outspent by Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany and we're slipping behind them, so, I'd say at this stage, unless there is additional funding and it should have come earlier than now, we're probably looking at somewhere between 8th and 10th.
LIZ HAYES: Is that embarrassing?
JOHN COATES: It's embarrassing if - when you know that we can do better.
LIZ HAYES: OK, so what has happened? Did somebody stop caring? Did somebody decide it didn't matter?
JOHN COATES: They've taken the eye off the ball, the Government has. The last significant increase in funding was in 1994,
LIZ HAYES: Meanwhile, British athletes are being showered in cash - a billion-dollar bonanza, direct from its national lotteries. That's more than double our Olympic budget. The Brits now have the best of everything - coaches, facilities, science and technology. But the key change is paying their stars big bucks to be full-time athletes.
MARK HUNTER: When I first came into the sport, you used to have to work and train. So you'd train before work, go to work, do your day's work and then train in the evening, so your day was pretty much taken up. But now we're able to actually have the full recovery so we can train more, more volume, more intensely and get the benefits from it.
LIZ HAYES: The result - 31-year-old rower Mark Hunter went from last place at the Athens Olympics in 2004 to a gold medal in Beijing four years later. The next goal is to blitz the Games on home turf in London and give the Aussies a flogging along the way. So does it feel really good to be able to slap the Australians?
MARK HUNTER: Yes. I think it - I actually do think Australia is more competitive of us. They look up to us and want to beat us at everything, where we just kind of really just stay relaxed and we want to beat everyone. Like, we're not just looking for one nation, although it's good to take the Aussies down when you know it's needed, and put them in their place, which is always good.
LIZ HAYES: How big a motivator is it for you to beat us?
LORD MOYNIHAN: Big-time, big-time. You ask the British public what are the two objectives for the Olympic Games and the first one they'll say is to to see the Union Jack go up that flagpole as many times as possible, to get gold medals and to really succeed. And the other is to beat the Aussies when they come over here.
LIZ HAYES: Three-times Olympian Katherine Grainger is Britain's queen of rowing and now earns a six-figure salary. Along with the cash, she's seen a new sporting pride sweep the country - a hope that Britain may finally shake its tag as a nation of also-rans. Well, you're no longer the underdog.
KATHERINE GRAINGER: No, I think sometimes we like to mentally think we might be, but I think if we just went along and just had a jolly good race, then it wouldn't be enough any more. People want to see us up there winning and that's what we want as well, so it's good for everyone.
LIZ HAYES: Australian rower Dan Noonan's hunger for victory is just as strong as his British rivals but, for this world champion, the dream sometimes takes a backseat to a drain. He pays the bills by working as a plumber.
LIZ HAYES: This is the other job, huh?
DAN NOONAN: Yes, that's right! This is the day job.
LIZ HAYES: When you're doing this, are you hating the fact you're not out on the water?
DAN NOONAN: Yeah, but, no, it would be good to be out on the water now. Definitely.
LIZ HAYES: On the water, 'Grandstand Dan' as they call him, puts on a good show. In Beijing, his quad scull team missed a medal by a third of a second.
LIZ HAYES: So when you're fixing that leaky tap or unblocking that drain, are you cursing?
DAN NOONAN: It is a little bit a little bit of a hard thing to swallow, yeah.
LIZ HAYES: Money makes a difference?
DAN NOONAN: It does, it does.
LIZ HAYES: If you had funds to train and not have to work, how much of a difference do you think that would make to you winning a medal?
DAN NOONAN: Well, I think it'd make a massive difference. When countries put a lot of money into their sport, their chosen sports, say within a year or two they're the ones on the dais and winning medals.
LIZ HAYES: And Dan knows first-hand the difference dollars make. His own cousin, Paul Thompson, was recruited by the Brits to coach the national rowing team.
LIZ HAYES: Is it hard to cross over to the "other side"?
PAUL THOMPSON: Yeah, absolutely.
LIZ HAYES: Was it?
PAUL THOMPSON: Yeah, absolutely.
LIZ HAYES: Already, Thompson and an army of fellow Australian coaches have produced a swag of Olympic medals for Britain.
PAUL THOMPSON: The Olympics is just getting more and more and more competitive. Athletes at that level, they're like gold dust, and the things that you build around them to allow them to to develop and perform, that's what you get to get the money for.
SHANE SUTTON: I would love to have been back in Australia, you know, leading your home nation into that stadium but, unfortunately, you know that, that opportunity never arose and so I will be there leading the Brits in.
LIZ HAYES: Shane Sutton is another Aussie defector. He coached Britain's cyclists to a stunning victory against us in Beijing, and plans to do so again in London.
SHANE SUTTON: I wasn't the most popular person in Australia, you know, and all the headlines were reading, you know, "Aussie leads Brits to gold medal haul" and, you know, I was rated one of the most hated men in Australia.
LIZ HAYES: And with our best coaches, Brits now get the best technology. Here, a pair of high-tech virtual reality goggles that feed real-time information to the rower. Blood samples taken and re-taken. Every scrap of information analysed and re-analysed as athletes are pushed to their limits. The Brits are totally unapologetic that their winning formula has come straight from Australia, out of John Coates's own textbook.
LORD MOYNIHAN: He taught us coaching is all. We've got some of the best coaches in the world now working with our athletes. He taught us about the importance of not just backing top athletes but backing squads. So, the base of the pyramid, as John would call it, is critically important.
LIZ HAYES: Bloody hell, he's told you the lot!
LORD MOYNIHAN: Yeah. Not everything!
LIZ HAYES: Lord Monahan says you told them how to do it.
JOHN COATES: I think he just read all the reports about what we did but he's um...
LIZ HAYES: You came up with this model, you told them how to do it.
JOHN COATES: Yes, certainly I've...
LIZ HAYES: In fact, he thanked you.
JOHN COATES: Did he? Yeah, he's always been somewhat arrogant.
LIZ HAYES: John Coates has begged for more Olympic funding. There's talk of a $30 million injection in the federal Budget - way short of what John Coates wants. But Sports Minister Kate Ellis must weigh up Coates's pleas against calls to direct funds to more community based sports, like football and cricket.
KATE ELLIS: He wants $114 million a year extra money. Currently, we fund Olympic and Para-Olympic sports about $74 million a year, so there is - that is obviously a huge increase - 160% increase in Olympic funding.
LIZ HAYES: Does that means he's not getting the money?
KATE ELLIS: And that means we have to balance - we have to balance those needs.
LIZ HAYES: Does that mean he's not getting the money?
KATE ELLIS: Well, I can't give any pre-Budget announcements at this point but what I will say is that I recognise the importance of the Olympics.
JOHN COATES: The Olympics is the biggest peacetime world event. It does have strategic, it does have diplomatic, it does have trade repercussions, apart from the importance to our nation in encouraging greater participation in sport.
LIZ HAYES: So ignore it at your peril?
JOHN COATES: I've said that to them.
KATE ELLIS: There is no question that there are other countries who are getting tougher, are getting more competitive and are taking the charge to Australia. I'm not for a moment saying that that's not occurring. That's why we need to work to make sure we stay in front of them.
LIZ HAYES: Well, it's one thing to have a crack at your dreams - it's another not to be able to achieve your dreams because the government was a bit of a tight arse.
KATE ELLIS: Well, that's true.
LIZ HAYES: There's no doubt Australia's Dan Noonan could do with a leg-up, but he's not complaining. A lack of money isn't going to take the shine off his quest for an Olympic medal. Britain's Mark Hunter, on the other hand, believes he's almost got his medal in the bag. And what's it going to take for us to beat you?
MARK HUNTER: I don't think you're going to. It's as simple as that really. It's too late.
LIZ HAYES: I'm already a loser and I haven't even been there yet?
MARK HUNTER: We'll see if you can. It would be interesting if you can, but I don't think you're going to.
LIZ HAYES: Dan, could you just, for me, go over there and wipe the smile off their face?
DAN NOONAN: Done!
