Sport in the 1990s

Sport in Australian culture

Australia is often considered to be a 'sports mad' country. Our love of sport is reflected in the numbers of people who play sport, attend sporting events and view sport on television. Australia leads the world in sports science and in the technical development of television sporting coverage.

Sport and our national identity

For a nation with a relatively small population, Australia performs remarkably well at an international level. Sporting success, particularly on the world stage, enables the creation of a distinct national identity. Victorious sports people often become national heroes and some, like legendary cricketer Donald Bradman, become revered as Australian icons.

The popularity of sport in Australia can partly be attributed to a warm climate that encourages people to get outdoors and be active. Sport also enables well-loved national values like 'mateship', 'having a go', and 'egalitarianism' (the assumption that that all people are equal), to be played out. Australians also revel in the expression of 'fair play' on the sporting field - hence, sports cheats are often chastised for being 'un-Australian.'

Some people, however, believe that the discrimination and marginalisation of groups such as ethnic minorities, Indigenous people and women, challenges the Australian cultural value of egalitarianism.

Sport as a reflection of social change

A close examination of sport can yield other important discoveries about changes in Australian culture over time. As Australian society became more commercialised and globalised, so too did our sport. From an amateur, locally-based pastime, sport in Australia gradually evolved into a professional, highly lucrative industry with international scope.

The development of sport in Australia also reflects the gradual movement of our culture away from its British roots, towards a more Americanised, yet distinctly Australian cultural hybrid. While sports like cricket and the various codes of rugby point to our British heritage, modern sports like basketball demonstrate the penetration of American influence into our culture. At the same time, local sports like Australian Rules football continue to thrive.

Sport in the 1990s

In the 1980s Australia established an elite national sports system to rival the best in the world, including the creation of the Australian Institute of Sport. This system reaped huge benefits in the 1990s, as Australia produced a generation of internationally-successful sports stars.

Australian teams dominated international competition in netball and cricket, while Olympic athletes like Cathy Freeman and Kieren Perkins captured the hearts of the nation. Commercialisation transformed football into a slick, professional spectacle and thousands turned out to cheer on their favourite teams. While Australia's female athletes also achieved outstanding results throughout the decade, they struggled to achieve the same funding and media coverage as male sports.

In 1993, national pride spread across the country, when it was announced that Sydney would host the 2000 Olympic Games.

Olympic Games in the 1990s

Australian athletes achieved pleasing results at both the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In Barcelona, Australia won 27 medals, including seven gold. In Atlanta, the team again excelled, bringing home 41 medals, including nine gold.

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Several new Olympic sporting stars emerged throughout the decade. Kieren Perkins, for example, won gold in the 1500 metres freestyle event at both Olympics. At the Barcelona Olympics, he also smashed the world record for the event. Our rowing team known as the 'Oarsome Foursome' also won gold at consecutive Olympics, in the coxless-four event.

Athletics in the 1990s

Throughout the 1990s, 400-metre runner Cathy Freeman was one of Australia's brightest sporting hopes. In 1994, she won two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada. Freeman, an Aboriginal Australian, created controversy when she waved both the Aboriginal and the Australian flag during her victory laps.

Freeman also won gold in the 400 metre event at the 1997 and 1999 Athletics World Championships. At the Atlanta Olympics, Freeman took home a silver medal. She would go on to win gold in front of a home crowd at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

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In the 1990s, Australian wheelchair track racer Louise Sauvage emerged as one of the world's greatest-ever disabled sportswomen. Sauvage won three gold medals at the Barcelona Olympics and another four gold medals at the Atlanta Olympics. She also won the prestigious Boston wheelchair marathon in 1997, 1998 and 1999.

Sydney Olympic bid

On 23 September, 1993, the International Olympic Committee awarded Sydney the right to host the 2000 Olympics. Sydney's bid for a 'green and friendly' Games had taken years of meticulous planning. It followed unsuccessful bids put forward by Brisbane in 1992 and Melbourne in 1996.

The successful bid prompted celebrations across the country and, like the Melbourne Olympics of 1956, it fostered a huge sense of national pride.

Cricket in the 1990s

Cricket participation rates were high in Australia during the 1990s. Thousands of people were registered in local club cricket, or just played casual backyard matches.

Australian cricket fans had plenty of reasons to cheer in the 1990s, as the national team dominated international competition. Australia retained The Ashes throughout the decade and won the World Cup in 1999. The team also performed well in both one-day internationals and Test matches. Cricketing stars like Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Ricky Ponting reached prominence throughout the decade, while legendary batsman and captain Allan Border entered retirement in 1994.

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Football in the 1990s

Australian Rules football and rugby league both continued their national expansion in the 1990s. The national rugby league competition, for example, was bolstered by teams from Perth, North Queensland and Auckland. The Victorian Football League (AFL) was renamed the Australian Football League (AFL) in 1990. During the decade, teams from Fremantle and Adelaide joined the national league.

This expansion of the league created new markets for the broadcast of football games. Business interests signed huge deals to sponsor individual teams or whole competitions, and television stations were charged millions of dollars for the right to broadcast matches.

In 1990, for example, Channel 10 paid $45 million for the right to televise rugby league for three years. In return, the station would have regained its investment by selling advertising slots during football broadcasts.

Effects of television and corporate sponsorship in the 1990s

In the 1990s, television coverage and corporate sponsorship were firmly established as the major source of finance for many Australian sports. As a result, corporate sponsors wielded a powerful influence over the way some sports were played and marketed.

Television stations paid such large sums of money to broadcast matches, so they began to dictate the time of day that games were played. Traditionally, football matches were played on Saturday afternoons. In the 1990s, however, rugby league and AFL matches were scheduled on Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday afternoons and sometimes even on Monday nights. This maximised the potential television audience and allowed more games to be broadcast.

While such scheduling of matches may have satisfied the needs of television stations and sponsors, some people argued that playing at night was not in the best interests of the players themselves.

The effects of commercialisation in rugby league became evident in the 1990s when an expensive marketing campaign was employed to re-brand the game and broaden its appeal to women and white-collar workers. American singer Tina Turner and Australian singer Jimmy Barnes fronted a national advertising campaign, complete with a catchy theme song.

The effect was to markedly expand the appeal of rugby league, transforming it from a tough, working-class game to a slick, professional entertainment event. The success of the re-branding campaign was evident when, at the 1994 rugby league grand final, women made up 50 percent of both spectators and television viewers.

Celebrity sportspeople in the 1990s

The increasingly sophisticated nature of televised sport served to transform some sportspeople into national and even international, celebrities. Millions of people tuned in to watch the sporting conquests of stars like Kieren Perkins and later, Ian Thorpe. Cricket, football and tennis players became household names. Sports stars would appear on the covers of magazines and companies would pay sportspeople millions of dollars to endorse their products in television commercials.

Sports science in the 1990s

Sports science reached new heights in the 1990s, helping improve the results of Australian athletes across many disciplines. Advances in physiology, biomechanics and technique analysis helped coaches fine-tune an athlete's performance. Other scientific advances helped to prevent injuries, improve nutrition and assist with psychological issues like stress and motivation.

Women and sport in the 1990s

The study of sport can yield valuable information on the status and roles of particular groups in society as a whole. Traditionally, groups like Indigenous people, ethnic minorities and women have been discriminated against, or treated unequally in relation to sports participation. This treatment is thought to reflect the prevailing cultural attitudes towards these groups.

Many female Australian athletes excelled on the world stage in the 1990s. Cathy Freeman and Louise Sauvage won Commonwealth and Olympic gold medals and Karrie Webb became one of the world's most successful female golfers. In 1990, Susie Maroney became the youngest-ever person to swim the English Channel, at age 16. The women's hockey and netball teams dominated international competition and Australia's women's cricket team won the World Cup in 1992 and 1997.

Despite their outstanding achievements, however, sportswomen in the 1990s struggled to achieve true sporting equality with men, particularly in the areas of funding and media coverage.

In 1993, for example, a study found that only five percent of sports stories on television news featured women's sports. The study also concluded that fewer than five percent of sports coverage in newspapers covered women's events.

According to some critics, this discrimination and the marginalisation of certain groups within sport goes against fundamental Australian values like 'egalitarianism', or equality for all.