Eddie McGuire claims waning interest of athletics is due to drug cheating after Tamsyn Manou calls out McGuire over his conflict of interest

Olympian Tamsyn Manou called out Eddie McGuire’s role in Collingwood’s takeover of Olympic Park back in 2008. And the Magpies president has responded with a significant takedown to the sport.

Eddie McGuire has delivered a vehement response to Olympian Tamsyn Manou, insinuating that the waning interest in athletics is a result of “systematic drug cheating” and poor governance.

Manou told the Herald Sun on Monday that McGuire had a conflict of interest during Collingwood’s controversial takeover of Olympic Park in 2008.

McGuire was a member of the Athletics Australia board, the governing body for Athletics Victoria, and Collingwood president at the time.

She said part of the reason she is watching her sport “slowly die” is because of their move to Lakeside Oval in Albert Park.

“As a track and field athlete and somebody who is watching our sport slowly die, I know that part of the problem is that we don’t have Olympic Park anymore,” she said.

While McGuire was complimentary of Manou’s competitiveness on the track, he took aim at the supposed foul play in athletics in a brutal takedown.

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Eddie McGuire. Picture: Getty Images

Tamsyn Manou. Picture: Brett Costello

“Tamsyn Manou had a crack yesterday – fair dinkum,” McGuire said on Triple M’s Hot Breakfast.

“Yes, the demise of athletics as a sport is because they’re not at Olympic Park anymore. Nothing to do with systematic drug cheating throughout the whole industry over the last 25 years or the fact that their governing officers, the IOC, most of them are in jail over the last period of time. Nothing to do with any of that.

“I feel for Tamsyn though … she ran in the semi-finals so often and just did such a great job. The great thing about Tamsyn is that she just turned up in Australia and ran all the time … unlike a lot of her compatriots who didn’t turn up for the Australian summers and ran, literally and figuratively, the competition and the interest in the sport into an all-time low.”

Former Olympian David Culbert weighed into the spat, calling out the hypocricy in McGuire’s comments by citing the Essendon drugs saga.

“Considering the AFL (Essendon) was responsible for the greatest systematic drug cheating episode in Australian sports history, which the AFL tried to simply make disappear, this is some effort by Eddie,” he tweeted.

Considering the AFL (Essendon) was responsible for the greatest systematic drug cheating episode in Australian sports history, which the AFL tried to simply make disappear, this is some effort by Eddie. https://t.co/oXJa9k8mfc

— David Culbert (@Culbert_Report) May 26, 2020

McGuire revealed intimate details about the Athletics Australia’s move from Olympic Park, including a phone call with then-Premier Steve Bracks.

He says Athletics Australia was haemorrhaging money at their previous precinct and it was “falling down.”

“I had a contract that said Collingwood’s ground could be no further from where that was, so it was either going to be built across the road at the Tennis Centre or on the athletics track, McGuire explained.

“Athletics was going to be shunted out to Doncaster or even to Aberfeldie where there’s two tracks – and we fought really hard and got a fantastic facility with the VIS down there at Albert Park … it was a pretty good deal from a very low base.

“They were losing a million dollars at Olympic Park and it was falling down. And, I’ll tell you exactly what happened, Lachlan Murdoch walked in to Steve Bracks’ office, the Premier of Victoria, and hit the table and said: ‘Build me a stadium for my rugby league team and for rugby league, as you’ve promised, or else it’s on.’ And at that moment, the premier of Victoria rang me up and said: ‘You know how you’re pretty happy down there with your oval that you built next to the athletics track? Well we made it back.’ And that’s where it started from.”

“If people want to say I’ve played a major role in facilitating the best sports entertainment precinct probably in the world – and a second one down there in Albert Park – I’ll cop it.”

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Olympian calls out Eddie’s short memory on conflicts of interest

Michael Warner

Olympian Tamsyn Manou says Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has a short memory when it comes to conflicts of interest.

McGuire launched on Geelong counterpart Colin Carter on Saturday, declaring his move from the AFL commission to the Cats boardroom was “the biggest conflict of interest I’ve seen”.

Carter had accused McGuire of being “hopelessly conflicted” in his football and media roles after criticising Geelong for not revealing the events surrounding Jack Steven’s stabbing.

But Manou said her sport had never recovered from Collingwood’s contentious 2008 takeover of the historic Olympic Park athletics stadium.

McGuire was a member of the Athletics Australia board, the governing body for Athletics Victoria, when the decision was made to relocate the sport to Lakeside Oval in Albert Park.

“I don’t like to call Eddie out because obviously he’s very powerful in the sporting world, but tongue in cheek I would say I think a bigger conflict of interest (than Carter’s) would be us losing Olympic Park,” Manou said.

“That was a huge conflict for people who were on the Athletics Australia board at the time that were very heavily involved at Collingwood.

“And you know what, well done to them because they got what they wanted, but we were stupid in track and field and didn’t stand our ground and fight harder to hold onto that track.”

Manou said the move to Albert Park had been disastrous.

“As a track and field athlete and somebody who is watching our sport slowly die, I know that part of the problem is that we don’t have Olympic Park anymore,” she said.

“Albert Park is a terrible track.

“It’s soulless compared to Olympic Park and because of the conditions, it’s next to impossible for our current day athletes to compete well.

“These days it’s closed a lot and not accessible to the public. During the middle of the domestic season when our athletes are preparing for either the Olympic trials or the World champs trials … it has to close down because of the Grand Prix.

“I was annoyed then and I’m still annoyed now because Olympic Park was our home, the home of track and field in Victoria.

“It was synonymous with our sport in Australia.

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“Cathy Freeman broke 50 seconds for the first time at Olympic Park. There was so much history there and you would be hard pressed to find anyone in athletic circles that would be happy about us losing it.

“I get that the market in Victoria is towards football and athletics doesn’t have a leg to stand on when you are talking about marketing our sport and where the money is going to come from, but I still think that an athletics track in the hub of the sports capital of the world was an important thing to have.

“I would have liked to have thought that there was a way around keeping it, especially when what it has been taken away for is a training ground for a football club.”

Originally published as Eddie McGuire claims waning interest of athletics is due to drug cheating after Tamsyn Manou calls out McGuire over his conflict of interest