Gloves off between John Wylie and John Coates

The gloves are off in a fight between two of the most powerful men in Australian sport.

Tension between John Coates and John Wylie, bubbling away since last year, finally boiled over.

The gloves that were barely on have now come off in what could be a bare knuckle fight to the death between two of the most powerful men in Australian sport: Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates and Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie.

Following a public confrontation between the two sporting heavyweights in a VIP area at the Nitro Athletics in Melbourne last Thursday, which resulted in the pair having to be separated, Coates has now booted Australian Institute of Sport director Matthew Favier off the Tokyo Olympic planning team.

The tension between Coates and Wylie, bubbling away since last year, finally boiled over when Coates refused to shake Wylie’s hand at the Nitro meet.

As Usain Bolt competed outside in the successful reinvention of the sport, inside anger escalated to a point where the pair were hurling insults at each other in a room attached to the VIP section.

Witnesses to the exchange at Lakeside Stadium in Melbourne said it as “highly confrontational” and “uncomfortable”.

The row is the result of differing views on how to arrest the slide in Australia’s Olympic performance in the past few years, as sporting organisations have been forced to do more with less money. Coates and his supporters believe Wylie has been lobbying to have the Olympic veteran removed from his AOC post.

An insider told The Australian, “they had a showdown. Coates fronted him and it was on”.

“Coates won’t be backing down. He stands by everything he said at Nitro,” the source said.

“It’s obvious the sports commission and the AIS won’t be involved in the Tokyo team.”

Asked about both incidents yesterday, the ASC said it would “welcome a more constructive working relationship between the two organisations”.

“In this spirit, 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,” it said in a statement.

“The ASC is proud of its positive and constructive relationships across the … sporting ­sector.”

The Australian understands that Favier, despite being part of the leadership group for the Rio Games, had not yet been formally invited to join that same committee for Tokyo 2020.

However the massive, and intentional, snub to the ASC is a huge pointer to how far the relationship between the two organisations and the two men has fallen.

Heading into the Rio Olympics, Favier was very much part of the AOC’s planning as deputy chef de mission, working alongside chef de mission Kitty Chiller and fellow deputies Chris Fydler, Fiona De Jong and Danielle Woodward.

Before Rio, the relationship between the two powerful bodies had been workable, but since then it has descended to a point of open resentment.

After Australia slipped to 10th on the Olympic medal table in Brazil, Coates took aim at the ASC’s corporate model of Olympic sport governance, in which a number of business leaders have taken over the top jobs.

“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, has failed,” Coates said after the Australian team struggled in Rio.

From that moment, Coates also believes Wylie and Favier had been part of a whispering campaign designed to topple him as AOC president at the AGM in May.

In a bid to get back on track before Christmas, Wylie — who holds the purse strings for Australia’s elite sports funding, allocated through the Winning Edge system which favours competitors with the strongest chance of winning a gold medal — proposed that they “reset the working relationships ... for the common good of Olympic sport in this country”.

But his letter went on to suggest the ASC should have a role in choosing the Australian Olympic team’s chef de mission

In a public response, Coates slammed Wylie for trying to compromise the independence of his organisation and influence its election.

In a further slap in the face for the ASC’s funding model, which Favier designed, Coates then ditched the Australian target of finishing in the top five on the medal table in Tokyo.

Sports Minister Greg Hunt, who arrived at the Nitro function after the war of words between Wylie and Coates, yesterday offered what some believe was at best a floppy olive branch to the pair in the in the form of a statement.

“The minister respects both leaders and is happy to play a bridging role in working with both the ASC and the AOC. He is already working with both in constructive mechanisms to assist with sports funding,” it said.

Heads of sports organisations say they want the situation resolved.

“The Sports Minister needs to pull them into a room and sort this out,” one said.

“Hunt has got to take charge. While he can’t intervene with the AOC’s independence, he can certainly say, ‘This is what I expect if you are going to have a good relationship with the government’.”