A zero per cent High Performance funding allocation from the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) has made qualification for the Australian Baseball team even more challenging, as they seek to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The Australian men’s baseball team who won an Olympic silver medal in 2004, and have since achieved a highest ever world ranking of eighth, following a ninth placed finish at the World Baseball Classic earlier this year.
As well as the historic efforts of the Men’s National team, the future is bright for Australian baseball. The Australian U23 team gave the best indication yet as to the success of the current high performance programs in place, winning a Silver medal at the U23 World Cup in Monterrey, Mexico, last November.
However, the funding freeze in High Performance funding, at a time when a number of sports received a significant funding boost, is disappointing for a sport on the rise, according to Baseball Australia’s CEO Cam Vale.
“We are disappointed the ASC and AIS has failed to recognise our medal potential despite an extensive consultation process,” commented Vale.
Vale went on to say, “I will need to educate the leaders at the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Institute of Sport more over the next 12 months, on not only our medal potential, but how difficult it is to run a proper qualification campaign on so little support.”
“Availability of our top players is critical for our success and is a major challenge for us. This lack of funding support will make it more difficult to coordinate the availability of our top players currently playing in the MLB, MiLB, Asian Leagues and College teams in the USA.”
“We remain the most underfunded Olympic team sport, men or women, by a considerable margin despite having had success only two Olympic cycles (that baseball was eligible in) ago.”
Despite the funding short-fall, Vale was clear that the sport would not seek to fund Baseball’s Olympic qualification campaign through grassroots funding, given that Baseball’s participation numbers have seen the sport reclassified from a Category D sport to a Category B sport in the recent ASC/AIS Funding allocation
“We remain indebted to the backbone of our sport, grassroots, who won't wear the burden of our funding challenge, and we will pursue other avenues for a successful High Performance program.”