Outraged Gymnastics Australia bosses "have been blindsided by news the sport's main Perth training institute for elite women will be closed in December," according to Samantha Lane of THE AGE. They say "countless females will be lost to the sport as a result." Australian National Gymnastics President Jacqui Briggs-Weatherill has "likened the brutal measure to extinguishing a football team after one lacklustre season." Briggs-Weatherill said that the move to close Perth's National Centre of Excellence will "end" Olympic ambitions of Australians pursuing what is "one of the highest participant sports for girls and women nationally." Certainly, it "throws the living and training plans of gymnasts preparing in earnest for next month's Olympics -- and those with eyes already on the 2020 Games -- upside down." The "level of the sporting president's disgust is amplified by the fact she was not consulted and, since learning of the brutal measure, has not heard directly to those responsible for the decision." Asked what the imminent closure will mean for the 60 elite athletes that train in the facility 40 hours a week on average, Briggs-Weatherill said, "The message this sends is 'Your aspirations aren't important'... I'm absolutely appalled by this decision" (THE AGE, 7/12). In Sydney, Nicole Jeffery reported Gymnastics Australia "fears it is being abandoned under the Australian Sports Commission’s Winning Edge strategy." The Winning Edge program, introduced after a slump in the medal tally at the London Olympics, has "redirected funding towards sports that are proven performers at international level." But it has "come at the expense of some of the smaller Olympic sports." Australian gymnasts have never won an Olympic medal, "although the sport has had world champions and medallists in the past decade." Briggs-Weatherill said that gymnastics had "embraced the Winning Edge strategy and agreed it should be accountable for its performance but felt it had been misled in the way the strategy would be applied." She said, "This is 50 percent of our women's elite program and we never thought that Winning Edge was about cutting sports completely" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 7/13).
