Why Danni Roche challenged Australian Olympic Committee John Coates’ presidency

AN Olympic gold medallist has challenged the presidency of the Australian Olympic Committee — and the fight for the top job has only just begun.

Former Olympic Hockey gold medallist Danni Roche is running to challenge John Coates as the next Australian Olympic Committee President. Picture: Ian Currie.

DANNI Roche shared what she considered a “very civil conversation” with John Coates last week.

Within hours, all pretence to civility was obliterated by the realisation Coates’ unchallenged 27-year tenure as Australian Olympic Committee president was formally under siege.

Rejecting a peace offer from Roche to continue in an honorary capacity on the international stage, Coates immediately fortified defences ahead of the most intriguing Olympic political showdown in memory.

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And his allies sprang rabidly into action.

Decrying 1996 Hockeyroos Olympic gold medallist Roche as nothing more than a puppet for Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie — the Melbourne businessman Coates loathes — Coates’ media and administrative henchmen sank the boots in.

Former Olympic Hockey gold medallist Danni Roche is running to challenge John Coates as the next Australian Olympic Committee President. Picture: Ian Currie.

Described by her former coach Ric Charlesworth as “divisive” and by others as Wylie’s “fourth-choice challenger” behind John Bertrand, Jeff Kennett and James Tomkins, Roche batted away the barbs with the same faculty and assertiveness that characterised her international career.

In the face of blistering, almost hysterical reaction, Roche was unmoved.

“It’s time for change,” Roche, 46, declared.

“The AOC is in a good position because of the work John Coates has done.

“But the AOC has become non-collaborative and dysfunctional.

“There is dysfunction at the top of Australian sport because of a non-collaborative culture and it must change.

“For Australian sport and our current and aspiring Olympians, it’s just not on to have another four years of this type of environment.

“I said to John ‘I have the utmost respect for you, but it’s time for change’. I believe that if the AOC is to renew, it needs new leadership.

“I’m aware there is a growing desire for change of leadership among the Olympic sports. I will continue to promote the Olympic movement on the global stage, something that all Australians can be proud of.”

Chef de Mission for Australia at the 2016 Rio Olympics Kitty Chiller and AOC President John Coates. Picture: Matt King/Getty Images.

A stockbroker and director of St Kilda Football Club, Roche’s decision to unseat one of the most powerful and best-connected figures in international sport triggered a ballistic reaction from Coates’ acolytes.

While Roche would not reveal how Coates, 66, reacted to what his backers described as “impertinence and the height of arrogance”, the words of the Olympic supremo’s foot soldiers quickly illustrated his fury.

There were scathing references to her father Ken’s wealth, adorned with descriptions of “a little rich girl who has never been long-term anything and never had to worry about money”.

Ken Roche won two Commonwealth Games gold medals and competed at the 1964 Olympics as a 400m hurdler before amassing a fortune in mining and then property development.

References to Roche’s family wealth were intended to undermine her vow to work for $100,000 as president, vastly less than the $717,500 consultancy Coates commands.

She also pledged to trim administration costs and junkets for favoured media types.

In the distorted focus on her background, there was no credit given to Roche’s athletic career, nor her business acumen or contribution to the ASC and St Kilda boards.

Instead, there was unadulterated smearing.

Some of it, found in the usual social media cesspits, was predictably despicable.

This is not to suggest it was sanctioned by Coates.

Elsewhere, there was searing outrage that Coates — a man apparently born to live and die at the head of an administration he rules ruthlessly — could be driven to the ballot box.

Roche, who is expecting her first child in June with partner and fellow businesswoman Amy Merriman, dismisses the furore as “noise”.

International Olympic Committee Vice President John Coates will have his leadership of Australia's Olympic movement challenged for the first time in decades Picture: Koji Sasahara/AP.

“It won’t distract me from what matters most here and that is a reset of the focus on the athletes,” she said.

“We need to make sure that every dollar counts, that athletes — not administrators — are the focus and that our kids are given the best opportunity.

“In order for that to happen, we need to be more collaborative and to cut out the waste.

“We need to support our athletes to a level where they can compete successfully at the highest possible level.”

Apart from financial objectives and implementing capped terms for AOC figureheads, Roche’s primary goal is to achieve cohesion among the nation’s peak sporting organisations.

All of those objectives have been blisteringly damned by Coates’ followers.

Declaring “I am my own woman, an Olympian and a successful businesswoman”, Roche makes plain her contempt for claims she is merely doing Wylie’s dirty work in trying to topple Coates.

Wylie and Coates share a mutual antipathy, which stems as much from their contrasting personalities and business backgrounds as philosophy.

Coates, who oversaw Australia’s slide to 10th at the Rio Games, its lowest finish in 24 years, clashed heatedly with Wylie at a Melbourne athletics meeting in February.

The exchange was witnessed by British athletics great Sebastien Coe and followed a steady deterioration in the pair’s relationship.

John Coates, president of the Australian Olympic committee and partner Orieta Pires. Picture: Supplied.

Tensions between Australia’s two most senior international sports powerbrokers has steadily built over the ASC’s Winning Edge funding model — and other issues — to the point where Coates accused Wylie of overstepping his authority and trying to undermine the role of the AOC.

The ASC believes Coates’ desperation to remain independent of all levels of government led to the rejection of Wylie’s Christmas olive branch.

“At the end of last year the ASC attempted to recast the senior levels of the ASC and AOC relationship, which was publicly rejected by the AOC president,” the ASC said.

Coates accused Wylie of agitating to have him removed from the AOC leadership by grooming potential challengers.

Coates’ supporters say Bertrand, Kennett and Tomkins all knocked back Wylie’s overtures before Roche accepted it.

“It’s not true,” Roche said. “I’m an Olympian, so is my father. I have tremendous passion for seeing Australian athletes doing well.

“It’s something I’ve thought about for some time. I’m sure there are all kinds of discussions going on at any given time in Australian sport, but I am my own person.”

A former Coates’ supporter, Roche has stepped down from the ASC board, pending the May 6 AOC election.

With 94 votes on offer, both camps have done the numbers this week and, while the incumbent is favoured, Roche believes the “momentum for change” will carry her a long way.

As she demonstrated throughout her hockey career, Roche is unafraid of a stoush and this battle is literally one for the ages.

Should Coates lose, he will also surrender the prized International Olympic Commission vice-presidency.

Whatever the outcome, one of the nation’s most accomplished administrators will be wounded by the fact several sports — hockey, swimming, cycling and equestrian — will side with Roche.

Hockey Australia president Melanie Woosnam captured the fraught mood as officials decide between past, present and future.

“The decision to endorse Danni’s nomination wasn’t taken lightly,” HA president Melanie Woosnam said.

“John Coates has made a significant contribution to Australian sport and the Olympic movement over an extended period of time and we acknowledge and applaud this.

“However, we feel that at the start of a new Olympic cycle, the timing is right for sport in Australia to recalibrate, and feel that Danni can make a strategic and valuable contribution.”

The election at the AOC AGM in May will hang on 94 votes from its 13 executive members, the 33 summer national federations and the seven winter national federations, which all have two votes.

Danni Roche, former Olympic hockey player who was part of the gold winning Hockeyroos team in Atlanta. Picture: Britta Campion.

WHO IS DANNI ROCHE?

— Born in Melbourne, Roche has lived in Perth, Brisbane and now Sydney.

— At 46 she is an Olympic gold medallist and serves on the boards of the Australian Sports Commission and St Kilda Football Club.

— She works in business as a successful stockbroker and invest adviser. She is a director for UBS Wealth Management

— She has been nominated for the AOC presidency by Hockey Australia.