Upon joining forces with the country’s peak Olympic, Paralympic, and Commonwealth Games sporting organizations, Swimming Australia shared its plan to build a national swimming base for high-performance athletes, coaches, and officials to gather.
On Dec. 14th, SA Chief Executive Eugenie Buckley announced that the 2023 project will settle on a location for the world-class facility to prepare Australia’s top swimmers for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games.
Buckley aims to make this significant contribution to swimming as part of his efforts to initiate Australia’s high-performance sport strategy. The sporting organizations share their vision with the phrase: “We win well to inspire Australians.”
The sporting organizations signed a joint letter that outlines, “[The Win Well pledge] is a balanced, holistic approach, supporting our athletes and people to win in all areas of life. It is about celebrating the humanity of Australian sport, valuing physical, mental, emotional, and cultural well-being. It is maintaining the ambition for success but always marked with humility, integrity, fair play, and Aussie grit.”
With this mission in mind for Brisbane 2032, Buckley told Inside The Games that Swimming Australia will be considering possible locations throughout the country to establish a “physical legacy.”
“We have high-performance centers in Brisbane, a corporate office in Melbourne, and a lot of staff in Sydney,” said Buckley.
Buckley revealed that SA is in conversation with the Queensland Government since the state and its capital, Brisbane, drive the most success in the nation’s swimming performance.
“We are Queensland-focused from a high-performance perspective, with 70 percent of our medals coming from that state, and we have three performance hubs there as well.”
While SA has needed its attention on this year’s international events, such as the recent Short Course World Championships held in Melbourne, the organization plans to dive into this ambitious project at the start of 2023.
In the organization’s strategic plan to further swimming excellence, SA launched its new consumer brand, SWIMAUS, in August and welcomed its inaugural Hall of Fame class in the same month at the SA Awards.
Great, build a nice facility, spend a lot of money (which will only detract from swimmers and other athletes receiving money). Meanwhile, has Swim AUS done a single thing to address the 45 recommendations of the Independent Commission report regarding misogyny, weight-shaming, lack of female coaches in the Swim AUS ranks, etc. etc?
It makes little sense for it to be anywhere but South East Queensland (Brisbane or Gold Coast).
Yes Brisbane or Gold Coast makes sense but Sunshine Coast could be a good alternative also. I like the thought of these big projects injecting jobs, cash and facilities into regional centres, but Sunshine Coast not that far away from Brisbane or Gold Coast for anyone that needs to travel from those centres also.