lovers of Australian sport might well feel they've been jilted for much of the past year. It began at last year's london Games, where the country's Olympians won just seven gold medals, their worst total in 20 years. Its much-vaunted swim team won only one gold - in a relay - and some of its male members were accused of bullying other swimmers and taking banned sleeping medication.
Things haven't improved much in 2013, on or off the playing arenas. An Australian Crime Commission report in February unveiled illicit supplements use in the Australian Football league and National Rugby league and warned of the infiltration of organized crime and illegal gambling. The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency continues an investigation, and still generates headlines.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said when the Crime Commission report was released, it was a dark day for Australian sport and the allegations were "sickening."
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd urged caution, saying it was important to establish the facts because he was concerned every athlete in the country "is now walking around with a total cloud over their head.”
"We all know how central sport is to the Australian identity ... it's because we actually believe in fair play and that's who we are," Rudd said in a television interview at the time. "That is now being torpedoed."
Unfortunately, the trouble didn't end there. Racism has reared a very public head.
Two Aussie rules players in particular — Aboriginal star Adam Goodes and Sudanese refugee Majak Daw — have been victims of racist comments. Goodes pointed out a teenage girl in the crowd after she called him an ape when he was playing for the Sydney Swans against Collingwood. The issue was really ignited when Collingwood club president Eddie McGuire suggested during a radio show that Goodes should be used in the marketing of the musical King Kong. Critics condemned McGuire's attempt at humor, saying it highlighted deeper issues in Australia, and he was ordered to undergo a counseling program by the AFl. But he wasn't fined or banned.
"She's 13 years old, still so innocent. I don't put any blame on her," Goodes said after the initial incident. "Unfortunately it's what she hears and the environment that she's grown up in has made her think that it's OK to call people names."
The persistent bad news for Australian sports fans came full circle last weekend when Barclay Nettlefold, who became president of Swimming Australia in October with a mandate to clean up the problems that came under the spotlight at the Olympics, was forced to quit after being accused of inappropriate comments toward female staff.
Nettlefold said he had made comments in jest to colleagues but conceded they were "not consistent with the standards expected of me."
The swim team will go to the Barcelona world championships in July with separate men's and women's coaches while Swimming Australia conducts an international search for a new head coach - and that's addition to a search for a new president and a new major $2 million-a-year sponsor, which it lost Wednesday in the wake of the scandal.
Patsy Tremayne, a New Zealand-born sports psychologist at the University of Western Sydney who won a diving bronze medal for Australia at the Commonwealth Games, says she believes Australia's decline in sporting achievements overall results from its isolationism in the past.
In essence, she said it was a case of what Australians didn't know, didn't hurt them in major international events.
"We probably performed much better than a small country should. We punched way over our weight, which is the Australian way of dealing with things," Tremayne said.