INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

BENCHMARKING ELITE SPORT SYSTEMS
Mr Nikolai BOHLKE (GER)
- Explaining the pressure for the improvement of the management
efficiency in national elite sport system -
1. Introduction
The aim of a national elite sport system is to breed winners, i.e. to
create internationally successful athletes (SIRC 2002a, 2002b).
Especially for the mature competition level at the prestigious
Olympics, gaining such international sporting successes is thereby to
be considered as a resource problem (Bernards and Busse 2000, Digel
2003, Tapsell 1999):
On the one hand there are the financial assets needed to provide
the necessary equipment and infrastructure of training facilities,
representing the necessary conditions enabling the required training
standards to keep in touch with the high performance standards today.
Therefore it can be assumed that running an elite sport system can
only be done successfully when `consistent, sustained funding and
support` (DCMS 2000, p.44) is made available.
Representing the commensurate condition for success, the human
resources, i.e. especially the potential athletes themselves, are on the
other hand to be considered as additional critical and short success
factor as only a restricted number of promising sporting talents are
capable AND willing to compete successfully on today’s international
elite level (Sir John Ron quoted by Tapsell 1999).
INPUT
Invested
Resources
THROUGHPUT
IN Elite Sport
System
OUT
- 472 -
OUTPUT
Sporting
Successes