The Western Australian Institute of Sport (commonly known as WAIS) is an elite sports institute set up in 1983 by the Government of Western Australia to support athletes in Western Australia. Previously, if elite athletes from Western Australian needed to train or receive coaching at an international level they had to move to one of the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) campuses which were generally based in the eastern states.
The founding director was Wally Foreman who held the position for 17 years until 2001. His replacement and the current director is Steve Lawrence.
The institute has sport programs including athletics, baseball, canoeing, cycling, gymnastics, men and women's hockey, netball, rowing, sailing, softball, swimming and men and women's water polo.
Staff are based at Challenge Stadium and currently include over 40 full and part-time coaches and 15 sport scientists. At any one time, there are between 350 and 500 athletes under management at the institute.