SYDNEY, Dec 8: National coach Alan Thompson is to seek “crisis” talks with Swimming Australia after being told funding has been frozen for the country’s top athletes, reports said on Monday.

Thompson warned the freeze would put Australian swimming in “dire straits.” Australia ranks second to the United States in world swimming and won 20 medals, six of them gold, at the Beijing Olympics.

“We’re in dire straits and we’ll be talking to our board about the impact these financial restrictions will have on us,” Thompson told Monday’s Sydney Morning Herald.

“It really is crisis talks between our high-performance area and the board of Swimming Australia.

“Obviously, they are very supportive of us, but there’s only a limited amount of money that comes into the system.” Despite Australia’s success in the pool, the head coach said the sport’s high-performance programme will operate on the same annual budget of 4.5 million dollars (2.9 million US) for the next two years.

By comparison, reports said Britain has announced it will be spending at least 14.6 million dollars (9.5 million US) a year on its swimming programme in the lead-up to the 2012 London Olympics.

Thompson said if the Australian government expects performance to improve, it would have to provide more support.

“What we have to point out to people is we can’t continually rely on Australia’s great coaches and our great performances and Australia’s winning culture to get us through,” he said.

“In the end it has to be supported, and the comments made at the Olympic Games by the prime minister and the sports minister were all very supportive.

“(But) while I know we are in an economic downturn at the moment, really, sport is still only receiving 0.1 of one per cent of the national budget in funding.

“We could double our sports funding with no effect at all on the federal government’s budget.” Thompson said the funding issue was a reason why Australian coaches were taking up lucrative offers to work in Britain ahead of London 2012.

“I said ‘no’ because I want to be head coach of Australia, but at some stage you may have to look after yourself. We’ve got coaches who live below the average wage line,” he said.—AFP