Australia's gold medal haul at the past five Olympics was achieved at high cost - Aus$51.8 million (32.1 million US) per medal and a nation of fat, inactive spectators, a new study has found.
University of South Australia sports researchers also found that at current rates of expenditure, Australia could look forward to winning 20 more gold medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - putting it comfortably into the top five in the medal table.
They examined the link between Australia's funding for elite sport and the medal haul at Olympiads from 1980 to 1996 and found the 25 golds won between Moscow and Atlanta each carried a taxpayer-funded price tag of Aus$51.8 million.
The cost for each of the 115 total medals won at the five Olympics was Aus$11.3 million.
But Professor Kevin Norton said the huge amounts of money that reaped rewards at Olympic level failed to provide any impetus for community participation in sport.
Administrators tried to justify the funding with the trickle-down theory, which says that if swimming superstar Kieren Perkins, for example, wins a swimming gold medal then thousands of kids will take up swimming.
But he said his research showed that as with the trickledown theory in economics, it does not work. In fact the opposite had happened - more money for elite sport meant more Olympic gold medals but less public participation.
"We are a nation of spectators, there has been less and less activity, there's no money left for community-based sport, what we are saying will happen doesn't happen, it's going completely in the opposite direction," Professor Norton said.
The study tallied the cost of elite sport in the run-up to the past four Olympics, compared it with the number of medals won and found a direct relationship.
An estimated Aus$1.0 billion will be spent in the four years leading up to the Sydney 2000 Games which Professor Norton confidently predicted would result in 20 gold medals.
"For $1.0 billion we would get just less than 20 but we will probably get one or two more on the basis of the home crowd advantage, there is always a definite advantage there," he said.
"But other countries are now seeing the pattern, South Africa has asked us to help them set up sports institutes, Britain wants help with a cricket academy and a sports institute."
However, Professor Norton said the well of potential Olympic medallists would run dry if low-level sport continued to be overlooked in favour of elite athletes.
But it would be pointless to try to change the situation in the lead-up to the Sydney Games, with politicians equating a successful Olympics with easy votes, he added.
