Olympics: John Coates’ 2032 Brisbane Games promise as he prepares to leave AOC after Paris
Olympic king maker John Coates has promised to deliver Brisbane the Games that was promised as he prepares for his official exit after Paris.
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Olympic king maker John Coates will step aside from his official duties after the Paris Games to focus all his attention on ensuring that Brisbane 2032 will deliver to the world “what we have promised”.
Coates, who is vice president of the Brisbane organising committee, has insisted the contentious QEII Stadium will be a new facility and not a refurbished venue.
“My focus will switch from the IOC to Brisbane,” Coates said.
“I have put myself in the position (on the boards) to make sure we deliver on what we have promised”.
Coates vows they can deliver a first class Games within the means of the Queensland state government despite the ongoing controversy about the track and field venue and post Games legacies.
Coates points out that contemporary Olympic cities have a different economic situation. Tokyo is ranked number two on GDP, Paris is number six, and Los Angeles is number three.
“Brisbane is 88”, he warned, adding that the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coasts are down in the 400’s.
“You can’t compare Brisbane to Los Angles, ‘’ he said, noting “they have all these venues in private ownership, although the Americans still haven’t told us how much hiring costs will be.”
Still, Coates insists that the old QEII Stadium will host 40,000 for track and field and leave a fabulous athletics facility after the Games because it will be a new facility on the site.
“It is not a refurb,’’ he says, “it’s a new facility there”.
Coates’ ability to navigate sporting politics at every level was forged in the rough waters around Sydney’s Iron Cove and the Parramatta river in 1966 which led to him becoming one of the most incredible global influences in Australian sport.
The money that has flowed into the deep reaches of Australian sport, the spectacular still talked about hosting of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and the voices of athletes may have taken a very different path if not for a slab of beer and horrified rowing officials.
Schoolboy Coates, then aged 16 was a cox in the Homebush High rowing team which used the Leichhardt rowing club sheds as a base.
“We went down to train but it was too rough, so we went up the pub and got some beer, but then got sprung upstairs drinking at the Leichhardt rowing club and the club kicked us out,’’ Coates recalled to The Australian on the eve of the Paris Olympic Games, which will be his last as an International Olympic Committee member.
“We were taken round to Sydney rowing club where the Olympic (rowing) eight was preparing for 1968. Those guys took me under their wing particularly Alan Grover, the cox. When I finished school I studied law and they stuck me on committee as secretary. I got too big for the boat, but coached there for a while. Suddenly I am managing the Australian world championship team in 1975, I was 25, and then coaching the olympic team in 1976. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t have got kicked out for getting on the piss.”
Coates’ administrative manoeuvring is legendary. The prime minister Anthony Albanese told a recent Games soiree that the key to handling Coates and avoid months of stress is “to say yes early and it saves a lot of time”.
It is almost unthinkable that the man who defied a concerted domestic coup attempt in 2017, and has been the right hand man of IOC president Thomas Bach for more than a decade, will step aside at the end of the year when his IOC tenure expires.
Quite controversially Bach is looking to change the Olympic charter and stay on beyond the mandatory two terms of eight and four years when his time is up in 2025. It is not silly to ask “how on earth will Bach cope without Coates?”
Coates, 74, will become an honorary IOC member, much like the other long serving Olympian Kevan Gosper, but he is not planning on putting his feet up.
During the drafting of the constitutions of the Brisbane 2032 organising committee and the delivery authority, influential board positions are there specifically for Coates. He has also ensured Australia will have active IOC representation with the imminent IOC election of his popular presidential successor at the Australian Olympic Committee, Ian Chesterman. “A very decent man,’’ says Coates.
That mean’s Coates’ sporting focus will switch from the IOC headquarters in Lausanne to Queensland’s plans, which frankly, needs a whipping into shape.
Coates was elected to the IOC in Moscow in 2001, under the luminescence of countless chandeliers inside the Kremlin, one of the last decisions made by the long serving IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch who had witnessed the Sydney lawyer bring together the 2000 Olympics.
Cathy Freeman, whom Coates had personally selected to light the Sydney Olympic flame - was there with him when new president Jacques Rogge, who also backed Coates, was elected to the top job.
“My most memorable moment was selecting Cathy Freeman to light the flame, it was the most significant thing I ever did in terms of reconciliation before people thought about that,’’ he said.
At the time Coates’ IOC election had not been guaranteed as his cheque book tactics to secure two vital African votes for the Sydney Olympics was at odds with a reformed IOC. But he was seen as a mover and shaker, and long term strategist which the IOC needed in its efforts to modernise. Take for instance the biggest financial contract of the IOC: its mammoth broadcast deal with the American network giant NBC.
In 2014 NBC extended its broadcasting contract, due to run out in 2020 with a US$7.75 billion contract extension to 2032. Close to the fellow IOC and NBC board member Alex Gilady, Coates knew that the best time frame for the American broadcaster was to have the Games in July and August and he ensured the IOC’s future host commission knew that too.
In one fell meteorological swoop Coates killed off the chances of international rival Qatar (too hot) and domestic rivals Melbourne and Sydney (too cold) from thinking about contesting against any possible Brisbane bid.
Back at home those within the Australian sporting hierarchy would not have been surprised at his actions.
In 1990 Coates had changed the Australian Olympic Foundation from a state based voting system, to the Australian Olympic Committee giving all of the Olympic sports a voice. He convinced the states to give up their power because the IOC had insisted the Australian model was undemocratic and against the rules of the Olympic charter. But of course who had encouraged the IOC to think this?
Here in Paris, where political decision makers would very quickly get a shock understanding about the scale and logistics of putting on 30 or so sports with 11,000 athletes ,there is a scarcity of appearances.
Paris has security checked nearly one million people linked to the Games, but just a few dozen observers are Australians.
Politicians are terrified of domestic criticism of having a good time on tax payer dollar and prefer to stay at home at the expense of knowing more about this monolithic event.
Which adds to the pressure on Coates ,who has been to Games for more than half a century, to get state, local and federal politicians on the same page for 2032.
Brisbane will very much relies on his political nous - shown by securing a $90million fee for the AOC in the mid 1990’s, which has been invested and used to provide a solid foundation to pay for successive Australian Olympic teams.
Coates’ experienced lobbying of politicians - think Graham Richardson, Paul Keating, John Howard and now Albanese, and his deep knowledge of how the Games comes together is crucial to get all of the important people moving in the one direction. He more than anyone, won’t let any choppy waters sink this particular boat.
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