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Farewell to Beijing Olympians

18 Jun 2008

It is a proud moment to be here this morning to farewell our AIS athletes.

The government are tremendously proud of the facilities, support and programs offered at the AIS.

Most of all we are proud of you - our AIS athletes and indeed ambassadors.

Its a great testament to the AIS that about half of our team going to Beijing is made up of AIS athletes:

• almost 200 out of total Olympic team of 440
• and for Paralympics team some 24 out of the 35 selected to-date

I commend all of those who have worked so hard to achieve these impressive figures - that of course includes the athletes but also the coaches, support staff, doctors, physios, sports scientists and the whole team here at the institute. You do a wonderful job and it is important that on days like today we celebrate that fact.

It is of course a tremendous honour to represent ones country- not many people get the chance to pull on the green and gold or wear our coat of arms.

I know how hard you have each worked to get to this point - the hours of training, the sacrifice and the commitment - now your moment comes.

We wish you all the best and will be behind you every step of the way.

So from me  best wishes for the final preparation  and I cant wait to see you all compete in only a few weeks time.

Now I shall hand over to the Prime Minister who I know took time out of a very busy parliamentary day to demonstrate his support and wish you all the best personally

AIS athletes  your Prime Minister  Kevin Rudd

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