Mind, body and soul - what makes a champion?

For those who do, just listen to this European account of first contact. It describes the Victorian Aboriginal game of ball; a game that you might well consider to be a progenitor of Australian Rules.

The men and boys joyfully assemble when the game is to be played. They make a ball of possum skin – somewhat elastic but firm ... It is given to the foremost player who is chosen to commence the game. He does not throw it [as Europeans do], but drops it and at the same time kicks it with his foot, using the instep for that purpose. [The ball is propelled] high into the air, and there is a rush to secure it – such a rush as is commonly seen at football matches amongst our own people. Some will leap as high as 5 feet or more to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it again and again the scramble ensues. This continues for hours.

Many other reports show that pre-contact Aborigines had an enormously rich range of sports, employing balls, sticks and ingenious technical innovations like the boomerang which, by the way, was principally used for sports.

Of course, contemporary Australians have continued this tradition of innovation by bringing the free style and butterfly stroke to swimming; the crouched start to track; and many others.

Finally, I want to emphasise that pre-contact Aborigines demonstrated the qualities upon which the Olympic movement itself was founded: fair play, competitiveness and delight in one's performance.

These and many other observations about pre-contact, non-industrial societies underscore the fundamental nature of sports to our very human fabric.

Over the millennia, sports have been transmogrified from a localised small-scale activity like that of the pre-contact Aborigines, on through to the Olympic Games of ancient Greece, and then on to the truly global arena which it occupies today.

So what next?

Where is our vision of the future? What is the challenge for the new millennium? We are, after all, limited only by our mindsets.

Isn't the Olympic Movement, with its global allure and its dignity, the quintessential venue for the exploration of human achievement? Human achievement – across the board, across the spectrum.

Isn't the Olympic Movement the ideal platform for encouraging the cross-fertilisation of ideas about performance from every persuasion? Isn't the Olympic Movement ready to embrace a larger vision of itself: one more passionate about performance in its broadest sense?

And isn't Australia the ideal country to propose a new dimension for the Olympic Movement? After all, we are the great sporting nation, we are a great nation of innovators, and in Sydney 2000 we herald the Olympics into the new millennium.