Let nation's Games post-mortem begin

Those which are perceived to have been successful will perhaps engage in an initial bout of back slapping before a more thorough analysis begins - for even some of those have pre-existing conditions that require attention.

Swimming and hockey can reflect on solid performances in Tokyo, even if in the case of the latter they believe both their men's and women's teams could have done better. Both sports had inquiries regarding their high-performance programs underway or promised before their teams departed Australia.

Despite the good results, these still need to be addressed - and publicly so - to ensure long-term confidence in their futures both at participation and elite levels.

Cycling and triathlon by contrast are regarded as having performed below par. In cycling the calls for change have not been required as its controversial performance director had already called quits on his reign before leaving for Tokyo.

Australia has long enjoyed consistent success in track cycling at Olympic, Commonwealth and world championship level, often based on a cohort of athletes emerging from a grand culture in the sport across regional Australia. There were dents in success levels but these could often be attributed to matters outside this nation's control such as Eastern European doping or massive investment spends by other countries like Great Britain.

Simon Jones was brought in from the most sophisticated of those programs - Sky Racing - after Australia did not fare as well as expected in Rio in 2016. The big-talking Brit presented a plan under which Australia would garner at least four, if not six, golds in Tokyo.

Instead, the haul was worse than the solitary silver and bronze that had motivated his hiring in 2017. Only the once always-competitive men's pursuit team medalled with a bronze - down one step on the podium from five years earlier.

It's hard to blame the re-configured governance of cycling in Australia given it has been in place for less than a year, but the time spent and tension created in getting there may have been a factor. Accountability rests with the departed Jones and his team but what to do next won't come easy with a board and CEO recruited from outside the sport.

This latter predilection in governance now common in Australian sporting bodies and favoured by the likes of Sport Australia might work when it comes to better commercial outcomes, but the jury is very much out when it comes to making the big calls on improved high-performance outcomes.

There has been a game of musical chairs between national sporting organisations for a couple of Olympic cycles now - a trading of board members, senior executives and more extraordinarily of performance directors. The preference for this more generic title instead of head coach had perhaps been deliberate to allow this practice to evolve.

Former triathlon star Emma Carney is fearlessly waging a campaign to get matters addressed in her sport after a dismal showing in Tokyo. She wants change in just about every department but it's high-performance results that feature most strongly in her call.

Carney was a huge player during the golden age for Australian triathlon in the 1990s winning the world championship twice and the sport's world cup on three occasions. It was a time when the green and gold was synonymous with both high level and participation success. So deep were our stocks that when the sport was granted Olympic status for Sydney in 2000 several of those representing Australia switched allegiance in order to get a spot on the starting line

Olympic recognition might be argued as the worst thing that could have happened to Australian triathlon. Only one male has ever finished in the top five and in the women there has only been a bronze since Emma Snowsill's fine victory in Beijing in 2008.

Across the board there are issues for our NSOs once the decks and quarantine rooms are cleared after Tokyo. Athletics, for example, has to deal with its proposed cure-all-ills merger with Little Athletics while gymnastics still has to grapple meaningfully with the findings of the Human Rights Commission report. And there's more elsewhere for another day.