India’s resources and ability to do things are its biggest strengths: Australian Sports Commission chief Kieren Perkins

Australia and India have a joint statement highlighting sports as a priority for cooperation in their bilateral relationship. How do you see this taking shape?

Kieren Perkins: We have a shared love of and commitment to compete at the Olympic and Paralympic Games that Australia is hosting in Brisbane in 2032, and India is now looking forward to the 2036 games. There is a lot of opportunity for us to collaborate and share the resources and the industry that’s involved in developing and delivering sport.

We have a long history of it in Australia, and we are experienced; our general drive for innovation gives us a lot of value to share, but we are often not very good at scaling and doing things bigger, and that’s where I think the opportunity to engage with India really, really becomes quite powerful. There’s a lot of opportunity.

How do you see the Australia-India Sports Excellence forum as a platform for building sports cooperation between the two countries?

Perkins: It is a wonderful opportunity to come together, meet, and start talking about our shared opportunities. Hopefully, Australia can provide insight into our knowledge and experience through what we’ve already done over these few days. Brisbane will be our third Olympic and Paralympic Games at home, as well as multiple Commonwealth Games, as India has in 2010.

But we need to start to share some of that experience and then open the doors to them where we can look for commercial opportunities to develop programmes, build technology, and help support businesses on both sides that want to get involved in the sports industry to help deliver.

How can Australia’s experience help India both host the games and improve the tally of medals?

Perkins: We’ve had to go through the process and the International Olympic Committee has a new norm process that they’re doing around game selection. We’ve been through it, and we’ve been successful in sharing what we’ve learned and helping with that knowledge and some of the expertise that we have to support that programme a bit.

We’re already seeing some of that, for instance, with the sports park that’s being built out here near the Narendra Modi Stadium, the architects and designers, Australians that have helped with that (Brisbane-based consultant Populous has made the master plan and concept vision). So, this is one small example of where it’s already happening. To hold a successful Olympic Games or Paralympic Games, of course, you need athletes, and you need the environment to help support athletic performance and growth.

That’s also something that Australia has a long and strong history in where we’re successful across many different sports, and our community engagement is such that we think that there’s probably some opportunity to help India start to develop not only the pathway to elite level, but to give more Indian children the opportunity to play and to develop skill.
This is not because we think they’ll be Olympians, but just because the active physical lifestyle and the lessons that you can get from that make all of us better in our lives.

What do you feel are India’s strengths and areas that can be improved upon?

Perkins: One of the obvious strengths is India’s resources and ability to do things. Once a decision is made, getting on with it and actuallydelivering in an incredibly short time frame is very impressive. So I think India’s got a clear strength and a clear opportunity there. I think thebroader dynamic of how to bring together major sporting events is because it’s the Olympics and the Paralympics; you need to do both.

So understanding the context of the Paralympics, how that is connected to and delivering both those events is an opportunity for us to help with—also navigating the requirements that the new norm delivers around building legacy and how the games are going to create a legacy that will support future generations of Indians in their journey. And also put India on the world stage through that event. So that’s something that we’ve experienced more recently, and hopefully, we can and will have the opportunity to help support India and their journey.

Swimming is one of Australia’s strengths in the Olympics, with the second-highest medals. How do you see the prospects of Indian swimmers, and which areas do you feel India can improve in?

Perkins: I think swimming is one of those sports that requires a significant amount of assets, swimming pools, lots and lots of swimming pools to get lots and lots of kids involved and then the resources around learned to swim so that people first they can get introduced to water and develop water safety and then develop their skills along the way. It’s incredibly intensive and requires a lot of scale. I think India will probably have to choose which sports we would like to be successful in.

I’d love to see India very successful in swimming, but maybe there’s a better opportunity to pursue a sport. Obviously, there’s already strength in things like athletics, badminton, table tennis, and some of the fight sports like wrestling and judo. It’s really making that call; what are we good at, what are we passionate about, and where do we see that opportunity to grow? I think it is probably a better place to start. Then, you can build some of the programmes over time across other sports if they’re the path you’d like to pursue.

Have you held meetings with the Indian Olympic Association? If yes, what have been the key areas of discussion?

Perkins: Not yet. I don’t think we’ve met anyone from the Indian Olympic Association as yet, but certainly multiple sports and governments and obviously we’re here for another two days as well. So, there’ll be opportunities to engage with many parts of the system.

What, in your opinion, does India need to prioritise its Olympic bid as an efficient host for the games?

Perkins: Understanding what the impact and the legacy that the games, that India hosting the Games can have, and how that would be expressed through the programmes it would be put in place. Also, there is a commitment to build inclusion and equity across all of your sports programmes and environments from, obviously, a Paralympic perspective.

So, for para-athletes, but also from a gender perspective, it’s a key tenet to the Olympic movement that equity for all is embedded. If that’s a legacy piece that India is able to show, (it) will also be a very powerful signal as to why they would be a great nation to host the games.

How do you see the revised norms by the IOC impacting future Olympics?

Perkins: It’s a very important philosophy to help build sustainability for the games. They are big, and they’re an expensive event. They’re complex and difficult to hold. And so finding ways to make it simpler, to make it more replicable and also to help nations find ways to deliver the games that deliver social outcomes, obviously a lot better governance and also environmental positive, environmental impact.

These are all really important elements of how you actually start to build that sustainability for the long-term execution of the games. For me, one of the areas of improvement with the new norm is to also find ways to flex that model for the environments that you’re looking to go into.So, what sustainability might look like in Paris could completely differ from what India needs to do. And we see that with Paris, obviously, it was government and corporate-funded mostly temporary facilities, but it still was the people of France, the government, that drove and delivered those games as most have been before that.

Los Angeles is all privately funded. All the facilities are privately owned. It would be privately delivered, and the government basically has no role. That’s not something Brisbane or Australia could ever do. The LA model is interesting, but it really has nothing to do with us because that’s just not our environment. We couldn’t do that. So, our version has to be more relevant for who we are as a country and what our capabilities and requirements are to deliver. So understanding them is what India learned from the past, but what’s actually relevant for India and what’s appropriate for India and be able to articulate how that fits into the new norm.

How is Brisbane preparing for the Olympics and what are the challenges and advantages you see?

Perkins: We are the first country that’s been given the games under the new model. We’ve had 11 years, so that’s obviously allowed our sports system (to establish) the national sporting organisations and the Australian Sports Commission is the funding agency of those organisations. It’s given us time to really think about strategically how we get to Brisbane and succeed. And so being able to actually plan that out and bring the industry together to work towards that outcome has been a really big advantage in developing what we call the Windwell strategy.

It’s an industry strategy for high performance in Australia, but it’s committed to all of the Olympic and Paralympic sports. Then, the infrastructure conversation will probably be less successful. That’s become a little bit of a political football and it’s taking a long time to resolve. But the recently elected Queensland government is doing the hundred-day review, which will come out in a few weeks, and hopefully, that will put to bed the question of what facilities we are going to use for the games, and then we can get on with the delivery of the infrastructure and the environment.

How much of the infrastructure is already in place, and how much will be newly built?

Perkins: To be honest, at this point, I can’t tell you the answer to that because there’s no sure strategy for what’s going to be used. So that’s where the conversation about building new facilities comes in, not because they’re necessarily needed just for the Olympics and Paralympics, but because Southeast Queensland and Queensland, as a community, need these assets to give them the opportunity to do sport and other activities into the future. So that’s where the negotiations are still going.

Do you see cricket entering the games in the future?

Perkins: It is in Los Angeles and will be the first time cricket’s been in the Olympics. At the moment, the programme for Brisbane is not set, though, and that decision may be made until, I think, probably late 2027. So, there’s still a couple of years of talks to settle on what will be in the program. At this point, it depends on the IOC and the international federations to sort of make those choices. Obviously, Queensland and Australia will have a lot of say, and we will be pushing for things we would like to see, but it still requires the agreement of the Olympic movement broadly to have that in the programme.

So, I would imagine it’s pretty safe to assume that cricket will be high on the list of priorities. I don’t think anyone in Australia would want to see cricket just once at the Olympics. I think once we’ve experienced it in Los Angeles, we’d like to keep it going. But will it happen? It’s too early to say; it’ll be another couple of years before we know.