Coates played hardball to get best for Games, say organisers

Michael Knight says his relationship with John Coates turned into one of close ­co-operation at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates. Pic: Dan Himbrechts

Former Sydney Olympic officials have strongly backed John Coates to remain as Australian Olympic Committee president.

“I have seen first-hand Coates’s unsurpassed enormous contrib­ution to Australian sport — not just Olympic sport,” Sydney Olympic organising committee board member Simon Balderstone said yesterday.

“He is probably the most ­accomplished — and still accomp­lishing — national and inter­national sports administrator and sports law administrator that Australia has ever had,” he said.

“Why would you want to send Coates packing?”

Mr Balderstone said Australian sport would be “much worse off ­financially, administratively and influence-wise — and less independent of government — if Mr Coates departed”.

He said that Mr Coates had been integral in gaining major sponsorships for the AOC and Olympic teams.

“Millions of dollars in funding and large doses of international support and influence would be lost to Australian sport if he were to go.”

Former Sydney Olympics ­organising committee media ­adviser Michael Pirrie, who also worked with the London 2012 Olympics, said last night that Mr Coates was the chief architect of the success of the Sydney Games.

“John was involved in making just about every major decision in planning for the operations for Sydney,” he said from London.

“Rarely has one person been so important to the planning of an Olympic Games. John has played a key role in both the Sydney 2000 and the London 2012 Olympic Games, regarded as the two most successful Summer Olympic Games in recent times.

“He is almost without peer and is probably at the peak of his ­powers, currently addressing some of the most difficult challenges in world elite sport and its governance.”

Mr Pirrie said international Olympic ­officials were surprised at the negative comments being ­levelled at a man they ­respected and who was seen to have done so much for Australian sport.

Former NSW Olympics minister Michael Knight said his relationship with Mr Coates had turned from being “very rocky” and adversarial to one of close ­co-operation in the lead-up to the ­Sydney Games.

As minister in charge of delivering a Games without draining the state government’s coffers, Mr Knight was faced with a tough situation, coming in against the powerful AOC president who had sewn up a deal with the IOC when the NSW government had signed the host city contract in September 1993 after Sydney won the bid.

“Initially I had a very rocky ­relationship with John Coates,” Mr Knight said. “His job was to play hardball to extract the greatest financial benefit for the ­athletes and the AOC.”

He said Mr Coates was an ­“incredibly tough negotiator” of the deal that saw him get $90 million for the AOC, which he placed in its foundation for the ­organisation’s long-term security.

“But once he got enough money to secure the future of the AOC, and therefore the funds to help support future Australian teams, he turned his full attention to making the Games a success,’’ Mr Knights said.

“Our relationship turned from very adversarial to extremely co-operative.”

During the Games, the board of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games delegated all of its decision-making powers to a Games-time commission of Mr Coates and Mr Knight.

The former minister ­described Mr Coates as ­“always outcome-driven”.

Former Sydney Olympic organ­ising chief Sandy Hollway paid tribute yesterday to Mr Coates’s organising of the Sydney Games.

“He made a very considerable contribution to the planning and the organisation of the Games and to its succession,” Mr Hollway said. “He was very clear-headed, and very decisive.

“He was one of the key people in the delivery of the Games.”