AOC vote: Danni Roche wants vote taken away from Olympic sports

AOC challenger Danni Roche wants to take the right to directly elect the president away from the 40 Olympic sports.

AOC presidential candidate Danni Roche in Sydney yesterday as she prepared for today’s vote.

The challenger for the Australian Olympic Committee presidency, Danni Roche, wants to take the right to directly elect the president away from the 40 Olympic sports who will vote today at the annual general meeting.

In her last public pitch for the job yesterday, Roche revealed that she wanted to corporatise the AOC’s governance structure by doing away with the current ­election process.

“I would have to check the constitution, but my0 view is to modernise with Australian governance standards where the board is ­elected and then the board would select the chair,’’ Roche said. “That would be my preference.’’

However, the International Olympic Committee’s charter requires that all executive roles at national Olympic committees be filled by a members’ vote.

The corporatisation of national federations is a hot topic in Aust­ralian sport at the moment and it sharply divides the feuding ­leaders, current AOC president John Coates and Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie.

Wylie, a banker, has made it his practice in recent years to parachute corporate leaders into board positions to improve governance.

These have included sailor and businessman John Bertrand at Swimming Australia, former Victorian premier Steve Bracks at Cycling Australia and Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford, who is on the board of Equestrian Australia.

Coates disagrees with the ­practice and sniped at Wylie during the Rio Olympics last year when he said: “The corporate model of having leaders of Olympic sports who are connected to the top end of town, such as Swimming Australia’s John Bertrand and Cycling Australia’s Malcolm Speed (the former Cycling Aust­ralia president), has failed.

“It is OK to have these business-oriented men on the board of Olympic sports, but not as ­president.”

The businessmen that Coates has criticised have lined up to ­support Roche in today’s election.

Roche, an Olympic hockey gold medallist and ASC board member, said yesterday that her aim in standing for president was to “reset the culture and philosophy of the AOC’’.

She predicted that today’s vote would be “very, very close’’.

“I think it will come down to the wire,’’ she said.

Her campaign endured a setback on Thursday night when the AOC Athletes Commission decided to give Coates its two votes, but adopt some of the components of Roche’s platform, namely the need for Coates to divest himself of most executive responsibilities, in favour of new chief executive Matt Carroll, and that the president’s ­remuneration should be reduced.

Coates agreed to these changes earlier this week, saying that he wanted to step back from running the AOC office.

Roche put a brave face on the loss of the athletes’ votes.

“I’m delighted to see that the athletes’ commission has embraced my platform and I’m delighted to see that John Coates has adopted the platform,’’ she said.

“However, I don’t believe after 27 years that John Coates is the right person to deliver the changes that are needed.’’