• The Australian Sports Commission (ASC) through the National Talent Identification and Development Program (NTID) aims to identify and fast track Australia’s next generation of talented elite athletes with potential to win medals at the Olympics and World Championships. NTID is part of the ASC’s Division of National Sports Programs.

• The Australian Government has committed almost $20 million over four years (announced in the May 2006 Federal Budget) to fund and support the delivery of National Talent Identification and Development Initiatives including:
  • $4.8 million to strengthen the national talent identification network, regional and sport-specific talent identification initiatives.
  • $8.8 million for the delivery of national talent identification scheme focusing on the unique potential and needs within the indigenous community.
  • $7.2 million to promote regionally significant sports and other sports which have high potential to improve their results in international competition.
    
• The ASC is delivering a number of national talent identification projects through a nationally integrated approach (across State Institutes of Sport and State Academies of State) in 18 specific sports which have the potential to achieve success at particularly the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India and the 2012 London Olympics. NTID projects will focus on the following Olympic sports including:
  • Asian centric—badminton, judo, tae-kwon-do, shooting, beach volleyball, triathlon, diving and short-track skating;
  • Indigenous communities—boxing, athletics, hockey, basketball and softball; and,
  • Other national sports—cycling, rowing, sprint and slalom canoeing and skeleton sled racing (Winter Olympics).
    
• Australia is well equipped to fast-track athletes to success through its State Institutes of Sport and State Academies of Sport. The NTID program will draw on the AIS cutting-edge sports science and technology, some of the world’s best coaches and newly improved sport facilities.
  
• The AIS has a long history of identifying talent, using the skills of its sports scientists to fast track people with athletic ability. Back in 1988 Allan Hahn and colleagues from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Physiology Department introduced a historic talent identification program for rowing which discovered and fast tracked exceptional talent like Atlanta gold medallist Megan Still.
  
• Talent identification projects will help broaden Australia’s sporting base and to maximise its relatively small talent pool of about 280,000 athletes (including all football codes, cricket, basketball and Olympic sports). China’s talent pool is estimated at more than 16 million potential elite athletes and the United Kingdom has about 1.2 million.
  
• Australian sport needs to punch above its weight through National Talent Identification Initiatives to work smarter and harder to stay internationally competitive.

Did you know?

Australia is one of only two nations to have competed in every modern Summer Olympic Games

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