'Instrumental': Peter Bowman honoured with OAM for work in building AIS programs

He and another were the offsiders for Don Talbot, the AIS' first director and future swim coach, effectively tasked with turning Australian sport into a global powerhouse.

They were starting a stampede, and they were winging it.

"Pretty desperate stuff," Bowman recalled in 2006, before losing his battle with blood cancer in July 2020.

"Made more desperate by pressure from politicians and, of course, the media to start winning medals, world championships from day one."

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A glance at what followed, and the Order of Australia Medal bestowed upon Bowman on Wednesday night, suggests they were up to the task.

"In the very early days, he was instrumental in working with Don Talbot to get the whole institute established," former AIS director and marathon great Rob de Castella said.

"He was one of those people who just got the job done. He was not a talker, he was a doer."

The AIS was established in Canberra in 1981 with a focus on elite coaching. The administration, without which the institute would fall like a house of cards in a cyclone, fell to Bowman and Talbot.

Bowman knew the walls of the AIS like few others, playing a major role in its policy direction as the institute's senior administrator and company secretary until 1984, when he became assistant general manager of sports.

There he directly assisted 300 athletes and 34 coaches across 15 sports.

When Australia's team returned from the 1987 world track and field championships, the perception was something had to change.

In Bowman, the AIS had its man.

The new coordinator of the track and field program was on cloud nine, managing the AIS' "banner sport" - which he unashamedly added to his voicemail with signage mounted in his office.

Charged with implementing John Landy's review of the AIS athletics program, Bowman saw to add coaches in each capital city, more assistance to athletes outside Canberra, a national coaching information program and better access to training facilities and sports science medicine.

Bowman was appointed Athletics Australia's high performance manager in 1993 amid a wave of organisational change, while also overseeing AIS Swimming throughout the decade.

So it was that Cathy Freeman, Michael Klim and Petria Thomas would rise through the ranks of AIS programs under Bowman's rule.

Bowman retired from those roles in the wake of the Sydney Olympics, finding a home in Kiama - never far from tracks or boardrooms.

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