IN the early 1990s, I raised the prospect of the establishment of a special fund to help young athletes in Canberra achieve their goals.

The idea came after being approached to assist an athlete to go overseas for competition; his family just couldn’t afford it. We had a fundraiser and sent him overseas, but it was to be an ongoing struggle.

His mother told me that the family was committed to ensuring he was given the same opportunity as any athlete who was financially better off, even if it sent them into debt. She likened her son’s pursuit of athletic success to that of a university student studying for a degree.

I won’t identify the athlete or his family but I can say, after 25 years of fund-raising functions, there are plenty of others in the same position.

Given the rise of the next generation of Canberra’s young athletes and the city wide pride they generate, which no professionally developed marketing campaign could ever achieve, the concept of a fund is worth revisiting.

To hear commentators tell international audiences of the emergence of Canberra athletes such as Patty Mills, Caroline Buchanan, Lauren Jackson, Nick Kyrgios, Michael Matthews and Anna Flanagan does wonders for the psyche of our city.

It also means that Canberra is on the right track in developing athletes for the world stage.

But we can do better. Why not build an Olympic-class BMX track to assist not only Buchanan and her next-generation athletes?

Imagine parents outside the ACT, keen for their children to succeed, looking at Canberra and the success of Kyrgios, Buchanan and Mills, and thinking that this might not be a bad place to live, to give their son or daughter the best opportunity.

Some though do fall through the cracks; they can’t afford to fund their child’s sporting ambitions no matter the potential.

In this era of crowdfunding, I’m suggesting that the ACT government doesn’t go it alone with funding, but that the community contributes to a fund to assist young athletes.

People would be able to contribute what they like – it might be $50 or $500 – but it has to be affordable and doesn’t have to be in the form of sponsorship as such.

And while I’m on a roll, the fund could be administered by the government’s Sport and Recreation Directorate with funds distributed on a request basis and determined by a small panel of people involved in sport.

It would give the community a feeling that it had helped a young athlete achieve on the world stage; a possibility that may have been missed had it not been for the fund.

It would set Canberra apart from a lot of other cities and would provide an insight into the community spirit that I have seen so many times at fundraisers and functions over the years.