Olympic heritage on display
The city of Melbourne takes pride in its Olympic history and continues to showcase it to this day.
Nowhere is this pride more evident than at the Australian Sports Museum, which is situated at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), the main stadium of the Olympic Games Melbourne 1956. Dedicated to celebrating sport’s identity in Australia, the museum boasts several galleries and collections, from the Australian Football Gallery to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
The museum’s Olympic Gallery offers a timeline of stories detailing Australia’s participation at the Olympic Games from Athens 1896 onwards, with Melbourne 1956 and Sydney 2000 providing the highlights. Making use of the latest technology to create an interactive visitor experience, it features audio-visual displays and Olympic-themed learning resources, along with many exhibits. Among the Melbourne 1956 memorabilia on view is the Olympic cauldron used that year; the official Olympic Torch Relay participants register, which contains the signatures of all the Melbourne 1956 torchbearers; and the five gold medals that Australian sprinters Betty Cuthbert and Shirley Strickland won in front of their home fans. Cuthbert and Strickland are immortalised in bronze sculptures near Gate 3 at the MCG, where a commemorative stone plaque lists all the Melbourne 1956 gold medallists.
Visited by nearly 150,000 people a year, the Australian Sports Museum reopened in late February 2020 after an AUD 17.1 million upgrade, only to have to close again because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, it set up a virtual 3D museum and made its collections available online.
It first opened its doors on 22 November 1986, the 30th anniversary of the Opening Ceremony of the 1956 Olympic Games, when it was known as the Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum (AGOS-OM). The facility was closed in 2003, ahead of an extensive refurbishment of the MCG in preparation for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. When it reopened in 2008, it was renamed the National Sports Museum. It took on its current name – Australian Sports Museum – following its latest revamp in 2020.