Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS)
The Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) is one of the state institutes of sport. These institutes are key cogs in the Australian sport system. QAS is arguably the most successful of the institutes in terms of producing international athletes; if fact if they had competed as a nation in the last Olympics they would have been in the top ten in the medal count. Since I was last here in 1999, they have moved to an entirely new facility. The facilities are certainly impressive, but the personnel are more impressive. Building stadiums, fields, weight rooms and laboratories do not produce success, it is passionate, dedicated people, that is what continues to impress me here. They do a great job of with the marriage of applied sports science and coaching. The sports scientists job is to help the coach and athlete not to publish and do research. Suki Hobson, one of the strength & conditioning coaches, showed me a comprehensive ACL reconditioning program that she had put together based on Bill Knowles work, my ideas and those of Kelvin Giles. It was very impressive to say the least. I was also able to catch up with an old friend from my previous visits to Australia, Mark Andrews, who is the Coordinator of Scientific and Technical Support. The title does not do Mark justice. He is an amazing thinker, who really challenges my ideas every time I see him. To have resource like Mark available on a daily basis is amazing.
posted by Vern Gambetta @ 5/31/2007 09:03:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Vern,
Will you be posting the ACL program that she shared with you?
Are these various institutes of sport private, or government sponsored?
The Australian Institute of Sport was opened in January 1981 as a fully Federal Government funded entity. It was born of the Australian failure to win a single Gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser made the decision to give all sports a better environment. Since the early 1990's the model has decentralised with each State or Territory having it's own Institute or Academy (This is known as the SIS/SAS network). These operations are funded by State Govt and Federal Govt. Athletes are selected through an extensive national and state Talent I/D progam and enter the network with a view to being in the national Team of their sport within a 4-6 year period. Some sports are deemed to be Development Sports and serve to transfer athletes onwards into more senior programs. Other sports are deemed Medal Potential and offer the full range of services from Talent I/D through to the international arena.
Some of the SIS/SAS network centres act as the hub for an individual sport e.g. Adelaide is the centre for Cycling, Queensland is the centre for Cricket. The AIS in Canberra runs a more 'Camps' based program where national junior and senior squads visit and receive concentrated instruction / assessment.
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