AIBU to wonder why Australia dominates the Commonwealth Games medals?

[HelloDenise]

The Australians are winning EVERYTHING at this Commonwealth Games! Why though?

Are there more of them?
Are they just better than everyone else?
Do they invest more in training and development?

Australia has been extremely strong in swimming for a long time.

Lifestyle. More investment. The USA arent in it.

They invest heavily in training through sports academies where the athletes train - or at least they used to do this. No working a job and fitting training in around it like athletes in most countries probably do.

Also not sure how it will reflect in medals... but apparently quite a few UK competitors (from all the nations) have had to chose between Commonwealth and European Championships.

Outdoor lifestyle.

It's a really sporty, outdoor lifestyle.

My entire, huge extended in-law family are in Australia, and every single one of them is really active and sporty. Swimming is huge as are either water related activities (water polo etc) and basically the climate encourages people to be out and about exercising in their own way. Even the oldest walk a lot.

As a visitor, it's really evident that it's not just my family members. And I reckon it's all about the weather. The only time I've regretted not emigrating like the rest of them, was when my eldest showed herself to be a sporty kid. She have loved it over there and had way more opportunities.

How else are we going to get away from all the sharks and crocodiles if we don't learn to swim fast?

And run fast to escape the Drop bears?

It's hot, they are at the beach a lot, many houses have pools or access to swimming facilities.

Am surprised you are surprised tbh.

A lot of the British athletes participating in the athletics events have chosen to focus on the Europeans later in the season, so the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish teams are weaker than they would’ve been if the best athletes were available for selection. I have also read that some of the athletics teams won’t compete at the Commonwealths as there are no financial rewards, but I’m not sure if that is true.

Australians learn to swim the way we potty train, there is no one who can't swim and they probably learned in a 50m pool.

Also a lot of people have a choice of who they compete for, a couple of games ago there were twins both competing for different countries who had previously represented a different country.

I can't remember exactly but it was something like they had competed for Scotland but were then competing for England and Australia.

Isn't it because the majority of the medals are for swimming in the first week? Australia have always had good swimmers and because you can pick up lots of medals in swimming for tiny variations of doing the same thing you only need a couple of good people.

It's simply because of the outdoor sporty lifestyle being far more embedded.

From talking to Australians one surprising reason for this may be that they often moan about a relative lack of cultural options there - less history, isolated from touring entertainments etc. Given that and the natural beauty of the outdoors it's maybe no wonder they have a culture of sport and are disproportionately good at it.

Because the Americans are not there. 😁

More grass roots sport. Encouraged at school. Normal to be in club / team outside of school. Therefore greater pool of talent to pick from to nurture.

I lived in Australia for a while and on the very first social occasion I went to a woman said ‘so what sports do you play?’ My dc did loads of sports quite seriously throughout our time there and Saturday mornings were a time when pretty much every child was taking part in some sort of competitive sports.

Their primary school had proper facilities (it was a state school). Loads of equipment and a massive cricket/football oval. They wore their sports kit every day. Everyone ran round the oval a couple of times a day. The PE teacher was a specialist teacher who covered the class teachers PPA. Sports lessons were ‘proper sports’. No arseing round with dance on BBC sounds in the hall. My dd was doing competitive shot put when she was seven having showed a talent for it at school. I felt like they got to try out a lot of things when they were really quite young. And that a lot of the skills we have to at school in PE lessons teach here, like throwing a ball, were already mastered at home or in the playground.

What everyone else has said but also I dunno if they can get to put up more athletes per event than in Olympic Games?That will also help. Also swimming, which they dominate, it’s possible for swimmers to compete in quite a lot of events, compared to other sports

Also, if you add up the countries in the uk, we’ve actually got more medals than them and dividing us into separate nations definitely lessons our chances in team sports and events.