Why does Australia do so well in the Olympic Games?

Question

Why does Australia do so well in the Olympic Games considering the fact they only have a population of 21 million?

Answer 1

we are very sport oriented, it is a large part of our culture. Also the weather helps, and you are rewarded if you are a good athlete.

Answer 2

Sport mad and down right determintion.

Have to admit the current Olympic must be hard due to the harsh weather but then again we are also a really really hot country

Answer 3

Being Canadian, I asked myself the same question, since we have roughly the same quality of life and 10 million more people, but so far, without a medal.  Australia is more of a summer sports country, whereas Canada is a winter sports country.  They train their athletes well with excellent facilities and coaches, where Canada will only focus on winter athletes.  Countries like the the US are spread between both seasons.

Answer 4

Probably because just about everyone here plays some sort of sport. It is our national past-time.

Answer 5

They are a sports crazy country.  They have an strong affinity for outdoor sports and events.

Probably, being so culturally similar to most of the western world yet so far away from it, that sports and competing with the other western nations is a way to identify and differentiate.

They are clearly good at so many sports and absolute masters of things like swimming and rugby.

Answer 6

The government puts alot of funding into sport-training and state of the art facilities - the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra where many Australian Olympic athletes train has the world's most technologically advanced swimming pool. Officially.

Answer 7

Well Australia is a very sport oriented society, you'll find most kids here play some kind of sport from a very young age.

Some of the reasons Australia does so well is:

Financial resources(over a four year period Australia provided 3.3 billion dollars of funding for elite sports, obviously with lots of funding it helps we have very enthusiastic government support.)

We have great athletic scholarship programmes.The AIS(Australian Institute of Sport, in Canberra, it's an amazing place and is right near where I live, I used to train there) offers scholarships to about 700 athletes in 35 different sports each year. Scholarship athletes get to live and train at sporting campuses whilst in contact with coaching staff, medical personnel and sports scientists for up to 6 months at a time. These program's do a huge part in shaping our athletes, and so many of our athletes are in these programs. There are also places like this in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and the Gold Coast(there's probably more but that's the only ones I know of).

We also have really great scientists and coaches! Australian sports physicians, physiotherapists and exercise scientists are amongst the very best in the world. They are  in demand around the world with heaps locating to England, the next country that has begun to follow the Australian model of training. With all the funding, we pay our coaches and scientists a very large amount so they are fully dedicated to the sport and making our athletes  wonderful.

We usually don't beat superpowers like china, the USA or Russia but considering, we do great!