Student Number: 12034231

Module: Contemporary Issues in Sports Development Module Code: LM3S10_2014_V1

Assignment Number: 1

“Critically compare and contrast the elite sports development systems that have been adopted in two countries of your choice”
Contents
Summary 1
Pillar 1- Financial Support for Sport and Elite Sport 2
Pillar 2- Governance, Organisation and Structure of Elite Sport 3
Pillar 3- Sport Participation 4
Pillar 4- Talent Identification and Development Systems 5
Pillar 5- Athlete Career Support 6
Pillar 6- Training Facilities 8
Pillar 7- Coach Provision and Coach Development 9
Pillar 8- National and International Competition 10
Pillar 9- Scientific Research and Innovation 11
Conclusion 11
References 12

Summary

Obtaining Olympic and international success in sport has become very important to an ever-growing number of nations. Figures of political importance and the media use the amount of medals won in competitions as a basic measure for international achievement, although this is not always seen as a reliable way to evaluate the sporting success of nations. Oakley and Green (2001) say success in elite sport can be produced by investing strategically in sport.
For the purpose of this assignment, the elite sports development systems of Australia and Canada will be used to create a basis for comparison and contrasting discussion, in relation to Olympic and international sport. The reason for choosing these countries is because they have both shown that they can be successful within international sport. Both countries consistently win medals of every variation at each Olympic Games. They also share similar population sizes, with Canada having a population of around 35,524,732, and Australia slightly less with a population of 23,630,169 (worldometers.info). As both countries are of similar population, it gives way for some interesting comparisons and contrasts on their elite sport systems.
The framework which will be used for discussion, is the Sport’s Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success, also known as the SPLISS model (De Bosscher et al 2006). The SPLISS model identifies nine pillars, (policy areas) that influence sporting achievement. The SPLISS model also has a number of sub-dimensions and critical success factors, which are key elements within the nine pillars, deemed necessary to improve the elite sporting and Olympic success of a nation or country. The reason for using the SPLISS model over other models is that it gives detailed explanations of the critical success factors needed for sporting achievement, unlike other models, which give little or no conclusions on how to achieve success. The input-throughput-output system that the SPLISS model uses can be accepted as a way to evaluate effectiveness of elite sports policies of nations from a multidimensional approach. (Chelladurai, 2001; De Bosscher and Croock, 2010)
Pillar 1- Financial Support for Sport and Elite Sport

The first stage of the SPLISS model is that of “input” or finance. It is widely recognised that countries who invest more money and finance in elite sport, will usually be able to create better opportunities for athletes to train, giving them more ideal circumstances to develop and achieve sporting success for their countries at Olympic and international level.
For the year 2014-2015, the Canadian government invested a total of $146,000,000 million in sport as a whole, with $61,550,000 million being invested in to Canada’s elite sport programme “Own the Podium” (ownthepodium.org). Where as in Australia, a total of $131,792,066 million was invested for all of sport, and $109,518,866 million invested for Australia’s elite sport programme “Winning Edge” (ausport.gov.au). In order to draw comparison for discussion, I need to make the figures of investment the same currency. In this case, I have