The Australian identity mythscape often promotes the narrative of fit and able athletes from the country honing skills in a backyard before and going on to win one for the nation on the world sporting stage. The 1970s heralded a new focus of Australian national and state government interest in sport, and subsequent reports and policies have considered the interplay between supporting sport for all and sport for the elite. When viewed as a dataset these documents can provide insight into how athletes from the periphery or borderlands have been viewed amidst a largely metropolitan focus.
This presentation shares results from a prosopographical study of high-performance athletes emerging in regional and rural Queensland across five decades. It considers how wider policy decisions have impacted the experience of those emerging outside the metropole. Commentary is provided on patterns of athlete migration and impacts on regional towns in the race for Australian gold.