Andrew Plympton sails away in blow to AOC’s John Coates

Former Sailing Australia president Andrew Plympton has decided to run for AOC vice-president alongside Danielle Roche.

John Coates has suffered the first defection from his AOC board, with Melbourne businessman and former Sailing Australia president Andrew Plympton nominating to serve as vice-president alongside challenger Danielle Roche.

The dramatic development pits Plympton, an AOC member since 2009, against the man who supported his elevation to the board. The current vice-presidents, Helen Brownlee and winter sports boss Ian Chesterman, are both loyal Coates supporters.

It will also fuel conspiracy theories about Roche being a stalking horse for Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie. Since 2011, Plympton has sat on the ASC board. He is also a former president of AFL club St Kilda.

Roche, a member of the 1996 gold medal winning Hockeyroos team, is a St Kilda director and sits alongside Plympton on the ASC board. She is the first person in 26 years to challenge Coates’s hold on the AOC presidency.

Plympton’s decision to stand for one of the two vice-president spots follows a failed attempt by the Coates camp to persuade Sailing Australia to dump Plympton as its AOC nominee. In addition to supporting Plympton, Sailing Australia is expected to nominate its current president, Matt Allen, to join the AOC board.

If they are both successful in the May 6 ballot, it will extend the Olympic influence of a sport that has become a poster child for Winning Edge, the ASC’s performance-based funding model.

Sailing Australia’s former chief executive Matt Carroll will take over as AOC chief executive on May 5, the day before all Olympic sports gather to decide Coates’s fate and the make-up of the AOC board until the Tokyo Games.

Plympton’s defection, expected to be formally announced today, will not surprise Coates and other Olympic insiders. However, it is a significant development in the Danni v Goliath contest consuming Australia’s peak Olympic body.

Next to Coates, Plympton is the most influential AOC member. He chairs the remuneration and nominations committee, which reviews consultancy fees and the executive salaries; is a member of the finance committee; and chairs the audit and risk committees for both the AOC and Australian Olympic Fund.