Australian Olympic Committee top job contest drawn along city-against-city lines

THE bitter battle to control the Australian Olympic Committee is shaping as a straight-out street fight between Sydney and the blue ribbon Melbourne “mafia”.

Danielle Roche takes a tumble while shooting for goal for Australia in 1996 Olympics action in Atlanta.

THE woman who wants to end the 27-year reign of Olympics boss John Coates has declared she “nobody’s puppet”.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the bitter battle to control the Australian Olympic Committee is a straight-out street fight between Sydney and the blue ribbon Melbourne “mafia” set.

The Victorian-backed Danni Roche, a gold-medal winning Hockeyroo out to oust Coates, told The Saturday Telegraph in an exclusive interview that if she won the job she had a gold-plated plan to end Australia’s woeful Olympic medal slump.

Coates has collected more than $700,000 each year for 27 years.

AOC contender Danni Roche looks forward to the vote.

Yet her detractors have hit back with claims she’s a “trust fund kid” who has “never built anything in her life”.

Roche lives in Sydney but is on the board of the St Kilda AFL club and is backed by a powerful coterie of Melbourne’s sporting elite.

Christopher Brown, governor of the Bradfield Partnership, yesterday said: “This is Sydney versus Melbourne. It is a ‘Melbourne Club’ attempted coup with the blue blood trust fund kid from St Kilda versus the kid from Homebush High.”

In her first in-depth interview since announcing her unprecedented challenge to Coates’ position, Roche told The Saturday Telegraph: “I believe it is time for the next generation of leaders to come through and return the AOC to a non-executive president.”

Her shot is directly aimed at Coates, who has controlled the AOC as president and effectively chief executive for 27 years and has pocketed a consultancy fee of more than $700,000 a year for doing so.

Coates greets athletes at the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

That’s money Roche has said she would not take herself and would instead plough back into the 15 smallest sports. What’s more, she has vowed to bring the current spending of 52c in every dollar on administration and wages down to a non-government organisation average of about 30c. She wants the money saved to go to Australian athletes.

“I am very passionate about seeing Australian sport thrive,” said the Ord Minnett investment manager, who won gold with the Hockeyroos at Atlanta in 1996.

Roche wants to divide the extra cash equally between winter and summer sports.

It is a plan that has gone down well with many of the sporting bodies whose 94 votes will decide the outcome of the election on May 6.

But not all of them.

Coates himself has clammed up after a string of leaked emails pointed to a culture of bullying under his watch

Roche’s former Hockeyroos coach Ric Charlesworth said: “This is a very orchestrated campaign that has ­unfortunately divided on Melbourne v Sydney and Liberal v Labor lines. I find it very disagreeable. There are a lot of resources behind this campaign against Coates.

“I have known John Coates for a long time and he is a very capable administrator. He just gets it. And you are going to replace him with one of my former players who has never built anything in her life.”

Yet Roche sees herself as Sydney through-and-through. “I have lived in Bondi since 2000,” she said.

“I have lived in Sydney longer than I have lived in Melbourne.”

However her backers are mostly from Melbourne — including Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, yachtsman John Bertrand and most importantly Australian Sports Commission chief John Wylie.

It was Wylie who asked her to stand in the first place.

Roche celebrates during the 1996 match against Argentina.

There are suggestions that the ASC would love to get its hands on the Olympic Committee’s $142 million foundation that was set up in the wake of the Sydney Olympics to guarantee its independence.

There is a long enmity between Coates and Wylie and the AOC and the ASC. Roche said the relationship between the two main sporting bodies is “not functional”.

Coates himself has clammed up after a string of leaked emails pointed to a culture of bullying under his watch that forced his media manager Mike Tancred to step down pending an investigation.

Coates also had to issue an apology after his former chief executive Fiona de Jong released documents in which he criticised the performance of a young female employee and said she was not in “a sheltered workshop”.

This fired up influential talkback radio host Alan Jones, one of Sydney’s most influential people. Jones has a long running enmity with Coates.

“When you look at everything that has been levelled ... there are standards that the AOC is supposed to set and it is failing. I think Coates should resign today,” he said.

Gold medal runner Herb Elliott said it was “a shame” the battle had become a “strategic campaign against Coates”.

“I cannot think of anybody in Australian sport who would be able to fill the role ... anywhere near as competently as John Coates,” Elliott said.