It came with reasonable fanfare from one media outlet but was essentially missed by almost every other.

Yet it was the very best announcement in some time for Australian sport - from top to bottom of both the performance and participation trees.

For Winning Edge is dead.

Never has such a misplaced concept been accepted without question by decision makers who should know better.

Never has taxpayers’ money been spent so wastefully without any tangible return.

Never has Australia’s rich sporting heritage been jeopardised by philosophical dogma and bureaucratic bean-counting run rampant.

Modelled on an almost-identical UK system, Australia’s Olympic bosses put a line through supporting the program after it failed to deliver their own targets in Rio and then its architect Matt Favier parted ways with the system delivery arm – the Australian Institute of Sport.

But the flicking of the switch surely was inevitable once the British version became so vastly discredited for a plethora of reasons, some of which have been highlighted in The Sunday Examiner in recent times.

Hopefully it will mean a complete rejigging of the funding and support models for Australian sport, and an end to unnecessary and heartless decisions like the one which denied the Tasmanian-based national men’s lightweight rowing four the opportunity to compete in the final selection race for the Rio Olympics.

Winning Edge was all about Olympic and world championship medals and pushing the limits to maximise their collection.

To be clear it was never about cheating - as the medal escalation schemes of certain other lands may have been. But it was about diverting resources to sports and events in which medals could be more easily achieved.

And it led to bizarre edicts such as that grants could not be used for high level domestic competition that would have provided opportunities for those on the lower and mid-tiers of the performance pyramid.

It focussed heavily on niche talent identification programs that would find the right bodies and minds to take on events in which medals were more available and more broadly, on those who were already highly ranked internationally.

Most troubling was the absence of any sort of plan to ensure a steady stream of athletes across all sports for the next Olympic cycle and even more so, for those beyond that.

Of course Winning Edge had its big supporters beyond those who concocted and delivered it. For the chosen ones the rewards were way better than in the past. For everyone else there was little but crumbs and most worryingly no hope for the future.

There is little doubt that if Winning Edge had survived, events and programs such as national championships and those domestic competition circuits that had managed to stay afloat, would have become such a shadow of their former selves they would eventually have faded away.

Essentially what Winning Edge said was that there was no point in an athlete seeking to be the very best they could be in Australian sport unless they were the very best according to the economists the AIS recruited to develop algorithms and other mystifying hocus pocus to validate all manner of things.

But we are fortunate to now be able to press the re-boot switch. We should be thankful that the Australian Sports Commission Board has been prepared to hoist the white flag rather than the drawbridge.

The words this week of the new CEOs of the ASC and AIS – Kate Palmer and Peter Conde were encouraging.

Both have serious credibility among their peers and respect across the broader Australian sporting family. If they stick to the rhetoric they expressed in the last few days, they should have little problem in gaining widespread agreement for a significantly different master plan for Australian sport at all levels.