125 years of heritage, yet more relevant than ever
Low barriers to entry, open to everyone, everywhere
The #1 Global Olympic, Paralympic, Commonwealth sport for audience reach
A foundation sport – if you’ve walked, run, rolled, thrown or jumped, you’ve done athletics
A sport of true gender equality: equal events, exposure, and prize money
One of the largest participation sports in Australia and globally
Programs reaching schools, families, and culturally diverse communities.
Accessible at every level from kindergarten-age kids to representing Australia.
30.7M digital impressions. Digital and broadcast reach surging through broadcasting and online growth.
A sport that connects hearts, unites communities, and carries the heritage and hope of a healthier Australia.
Where we want to be
Leading every Australian to a lifestyle inspired by athletics
What our focus needs to be and what we need to deliver
High Performance
Championing Greatness
Win Well
Deliver success with resilience, pride and the wellbeing of our people.
Sustained HP Success
Sustain international success through worldclass coaching and support.
Develop Future Talent
Identify, nurture and retain the next generation of champions.
Build World-Class Coaching and Performance Environments
Build integrated, high-performance environments where athletes and coaches thrive, laying the foundation for success on the world stage.
Core of Athletics
Strengthening the heart of the sport
Play Well
Delivering safe, inclusive and enjoyable athletics experiences for all.
Lead the Athletics Event Experiences
Stage world-class athletics meets that captivate fans and attract elite talent.
Integrated Pathways, Little Athletics to lifelong
Building connected journeys for every athlete, from centres and clubs, children to adults.
Empower community and volunteers
Support and grow the people who power the sport.
Beyond the Track
Inspiring new audiences through mass participation and bold innovation.
Play Well
Delivering safe, inclusive and enjoyable athletics experiences for all.
Engage new audiences
Attract and engage new audiences through bold storytelling, digital innovation and culturally relevant experiences.
Engage the running community
A home for every Australian who moves; on trails, tracks, paths and parks, from walking to running and everything in between.
Innovation
Create and scale new athletics products, platforms and experiences to grow the sport for all ages and abilities
What underpins and enables success
Elite Athletics: This is Australian athletics’ Golden Era.
Across an unprecedented breadth of events, disciplines and classifications, Australian athletes are standing on podiums, breaking records and taking their place among the best in the world. There is extraordinary depth at the top, emerging talent pushing through, and another generation rising behind them.
This is not one golden generation. This is what sustained excellence looks like.
Little Athletics: A positive and inclusive start to the joy of athletics.
Little Athletics is a foundation for all sports. It’s where Australian kids take their first sporting steps and a lifelong connection to athletics can begin. Built around family, fun and fitness, Little Athletics is about more than sport. It’s friendships, personal bests and family rituals. It’s the coach who helps master a new skill, encouragement from teammates and volunteers, and the ribbon that celebrates giving it a go and being your best. It’s where kids discover what they can do and families find community.
Volunteers & Officials: They don’t do it for the medals. They do it because they love this sport, and because it means someone else gets the chance to win one.
Every meet, every club competition, every regional carnival runs because someone showed up who didn’t have to. Before dawn on a Saturday, someone is marking the track. On a weeknight after work, someone is running a training session for kids who aren’t theirs. Across the country, coaches, officials and volunteers take annual leave, drive hours, give up weekends and contribute countless hours of their own time, all so that athletics can happen for everyone else.
Australian athletics is only as strong as the states and territories that deliver it every day across the country.
Athletics doesn’t happen in one building. It happens on a track in Darwin, a footpath in Hobart, an oval in Perth, all at once. Our Member Associations are where the sport actually lives: where officials are trained, where clubs are supported, where athletes find their community and where the next generation first pulls on a bib.
Our federation is a source of strength. It connects a national sport with the communities that bring it to life every day. Every state and territory brings its own people, knowledge and experience, and together we create a stronger sport.
Our National Strategic Framework provides the shared foundation for how we work together, and the work to bring it to life is already well underway. National strategies across Participation, Integrity, Facilities, Digital and Officials are being developed, creating greater consistency, capability and alignment across the sport while recognising the needs of our local communities.
Over the next ten years, we grow by growing together: nationally aligned, locally empowered. When we align our systems, share our knowledge, and back each other’s ambitions, the whole sport moves forward faster and with more momentum.
