Coates’ iron grip on AOC starts to slip

Olympic chief John Coates found himself this week at a board meeting of the AOC not of his own choosing.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates. Picture: Dan Himbrechts

For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, John Coates found himself this week at a board meeting of the Australian Olympic Committee neither of his choosing nor under his ­control.

It wasn’t his idea to call it; it wasn’t his agenda up for ­discussion; it wasn’t even his meeting to chair.

The meeting had been called by three AOC directors who want to end Coates’s 26-year reign over Australia’s Olympic movement. At the top of the agenda were questions about a bullying complaint against Mike Tancred, Coates’s loyal enforcer who had stood down from his AOC job earlier that day, and whether a toxic workplace ­culture had been allowed to ­fester in the organisation.

At the start of the phone hook-up, it was suggested that someone other than Coates should chair the meeting. Left with little choice, Coates agreed for Ian Chesterman, an AOC vice-president and the chef de mission for next year’s Winter Olympic Games, to take over.

What followed was a polite but pointed examination of a slew of complaints against Tancred, the AOC media director and Coates’s personal spokesman. None of it should have come as any surprise to the AOC boss. Documents published this week by The Australian show he has known since 2008 about an alleged pattern of behaviour by Tancred that has made working at the AOC a miserable exper­ience for some staff.

The AOC board resolved to do two things. The first was to refer the most recent complaint against Tancred — allegations of bullying and threatening behaviour made by former AOC chief executive Fiona de Jong — to an independent panel of three ­retired judges, Ian Callinan and Susan Crennan from the High Court, and former NSW ­Supreme Court Justice Greg James.

The second was more contentious: the establishment of a ­review into the workplace culture­ of the AOC. It is unclear who will conduct it and whether it will be genuinely independent. In any ­serious review, the ­actions of Tancred cannot be isolated from decisions taken and not taken by Coates and the AOC boss’s own treatment of staff.

Correspondence emerged this week of Coates’s dressing-down of a relatively junior AOC employee in an email copied to the hapless staffer, a group of senior AOC managers and two other board members. His ill-judged use of “sheltered workshop’’, an antiquated phrase demeaning towards people with disabilities, has got the most attention.

Largely overlooked has been Coates’s comment to Sue O’Donnell, the AOC’s chief financial offic­er, earlier in the email chain.

“After … stuff-ups in taking and loosing (sic) uniform measurements, she’d be wise to worry about improving her general performance in the sports department before venturing again into the area of drafting which she has previously shown herself incapable. Please try to be more discerning before worrying me with crap like this again, particularly while I’m engaged chairing a two day Co-Com meeting.’’

The “crap” Coates referred to was proposed changes to the AOC constitution, required before an upcoming annual general meeting, to clarify the strategic responsibilities of the AOC executive, the governing board of Australia’s peak Olympic body.

“Co-Com” is shorthand for the IOC’s co-ordination commission for the Tokyo Games. The ­message from Coates: don’t bother me with AOC business while I’m doing far more important things on the world stage. He charges $716,500 for his services rendered as AOC executive president.

The former staffer whom Coates belittled in the email exchange still works in Australian sport. Due to her well-documented battle with leukemia, the sports delegates ­voting in next Saturday’s AOC elections know who she is. They remember her as someone who was prompt, courteous and willing to fix a problem.

“She is an absolutely beautiful person,’’ said Basketball Australia chief executive Anthony Moore. “She was one of the can-do people. She was terrific. We dealt with her on everything.’’

Tancred is a former journalist who joined the AOC in the lead-up to the Sydney Games. He is ­unwaveringly loyal to his boss. Over the years, this has made him an essential instrument in the Coates regime. It also makes things difficult for anyone whose interests are not aligned with the AOC’s ruling cabal.

Fiona de Jong’s AOC prospects changed forever in November 2015. She had been named the AOC’s first chief executive in May that year, after being appointed general secretary, the organisation’s most senior administrative role a year earlier. She was very close to the boss. As one senior Olympic figure puts it: “Fiona was the absolute golden child of John Coates for 10 years; she could not do a thing wrong.’’

Not in the eyes of Tancred. He refused to report to de Jong. On ­November 9, 2015, Coates decided Tancred would report directly to him. This left de Jong with no direct­ control over the communi­c­ations of the organisation she was supposed to be managing. More importantly, it gave full licence to Tancred to pass inform­ation to Coates and withhold it from de Jong. The result was a steady erosion of de Jong’s position­ and authority within the organisation.

During the Rio Olym­pics, she was a deputy chef de mission given largely menial tasks until the night of the fateful basketball semi-final when she was called on to secure the release of nine Australian athletes out of police custody. She quit two months after the Games.

Within the AOC, it is a familiar pattern. Before the rise of de Jong, Nick Green was seen as a potential successor to Coates. He was a two-time Olympic champion in Coates’s preferred sport of rowing.

When Coates appointed him chef de mission for the London Games, he was the first person other than Coates to lead an Australian team to a summer Olympics since Los Angeles in 1984. His relationship was never the same with Coates, however, after he fell out bitterly with Tancred. Their feud is directly related to the Stilnox scandal at Australia’s 2012 Olympic campaign and, particularly, the question of who knew what about misuse of sleeping pills by some Australian swimmers.

Tancred told an AOC-commissioned invest­igation into the affair it was common knowledge throughout the athletes’ village that swimmers were taking Stilnox. The insinuation was that Green, as chef de mission, knew and did nothing. Green angrily ­denied this. Ever since, his relationship with Tancred has been poisonous. Green is not standing for AOC re-election on Saturday.

The most senior administrator within the AOC before de Jong was Craig Phillips, now chief executive of Commonwealth Games Australia. Like Green, Phillips could not abide Tancred. He also felt that his position was undermined by Tancred reporting directly to Coates.

In effect, he serves as Coates’s ears and eyes within the AOC, along with other trusted staff, when Coates is away in ­Lausanne working for the IOC or the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

“There is a disproportionate amount of power that Mike Tancred has because he is protected by John,’’ an AOC insider said. “He is loyal to John and will protect John to the death. He will do things along the way that undermine the CEO and the chef de mission by running straight to the president. That’s been going on for 20 years.’’

Tancred is on indefinite leave, still receiving the $330,000 salary he earns as AOC media director. If Coates is re-elected AOC president next Saturday, Tancred has every reason to believe that within a month or two he will be back in his job, behind his desk in the AOC’s harbourside headquarters, riding shotgun to the most powerful man in Australian sport.

Nearly a decade ago, an AOC employee who had a miscarriage in the lead-up to the Beijing Games ­alleges she received bullying treatment from Tancred on her return to Sydney. She sat down with the AOC’s then HR manager Kylie Algie. Over several cups of coffee, she documented multiple examples of alleged inappropriate ­behaviour by Tancred towards her. She sought another job and soon quit the AOC. It appears her complaint was never acted upon. Tancred was not sanctioned. He disputes that there was even a formal complaint against him.

In her resignation letter to Coates, she referred to her complaint and made clear that she was not alone in her experiences with Tancred. “He has made me feel uncomfortable and I know that he has made other staff members feel the same way. I love my job and would love to stay but I don’t want to work for someone who shows me little trust and respect.’’

Given the matters raised, Coates’s response was extraordinary in its brevity and tone. It ran to four lines, cheerily thanking her for her work. “And in that regard, I just do not believe that Mike would slander you to anyone so rest easy,’’ he added.

De Jong is unlikely to benefit from speaking out against the ­culture of the AOC. She recently applied for the vacant chief executive job at AFL club Hawthorn. The national profile she has gained as a workplace whistleblower will not help her chances.

She has a file of complaints by former AOC ­em­ploy­ees that is growing by the day. She hasn’t solicited­ them but other women — who mostly work at the AOC — came to her with their stories.

They want them investig­ated and considered by the same independent panel that will ­handle de Jong’s complaint.

Like her, they want things to change at Australia’s Olympic body. Like her, they are pessim­istic about this happening while Coates remains in power.