Coates secures AOC control, offers olive branch to critics

AOC president John Coates has vowed there will be no recriminations from his side against the sports who did not support him.

John Coates at the Australian Olympic Committee AGM in Sydney today. Picture: Getty Images

Returned Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates has vowed there will be no recriminations from his side against the sports who did not support him in today’s election.

Coates won the election 58-35 from challenger Danni Roche and said he was confident that the split in the ranks would not continue into his new four-year term.

He said that some of the sports that opposed him, including Hockey Australia who nominated Roche, had already come to him and cleared the air.

“I have had a number of them come to me saying they look forward to working with me and that will be the same from my side,’’ he said.

He publicly thanked Roche for her input and said he would bear no grudges for some of the claims made against him during the campaign.

“This was an election campaign, I put these things behind me,’’ he said.

Coates said the bruising process had been “mild’’ compared to the federal government’s campaign to force the Olympic committee to boycott the Moscow Games, his first introduction to sports politics.

Coates also said he would put out an olive branch to the man he believes engineered Roche’s campaign against him, Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie, in a bid to end their ongoing feud.

“John and I have both been involved in business and we have had our victories and have had our defeats,’’ Coates said.

“I made it clear I would be ringing him when I got back from Lausanne in two weeks’ time.’’

Coates said he would offer to campaign for more resources for the Australian Sports Commission, which he suspects will take another funding cut in next week’s federal budget.

His message to Wylie would be “send us out into battle’’.

He argues that Wylie cannot prosecute the case as vigorously because he is appointed by the government, in contrast to Coates, who has been re-elected by an independent organisation.

Their chief executives Kate Palmer (ASC) and Matt Carroll (AOC) are due to meet in Canberra on Thursday.

Coates reasserted that this would be his last term in office and that he would help the new AOC executive board to identify a successor over the next four years, and give potential candidates international experience to help prepare them.

Coates can afford to be magnanimous after reasserting his power over the organisation.

He ran a ticket of candidates and all but one of them were elected by majority in the first round of the ballot.

His two incumbent vice-presidents, Winter Olympic team chief Ian Chesterman and NSW Olympic Council president Helen Brownlee, were re-elected ahead of Roche supporter Andrew Plympton, the former president of Sailing Australia.

Chesterman took the first vice-president position with 48 votes ahead of Plympton (25) and Brownlee (20).

Chesterman’s votes then swung primarily to Brownlee in the second round and she won 54-38. Plympton will lose his place on the executive board.

As the exhaustive ballot for executive positions began the Coates ticket continued to win the day.

Sailing Australia president Matt Allen and Athletics Australia president Mark Arbib were the first two elected, followed by Volleyball Australian president Craig Carracher, Rio Olympic chef de mission Kitty Chiller and newcomer Evelyn Halls, from fencing.

The voting discipline only broke down over the last two positions.

Swimming Australia’s Nicole Livingstone, who has been in the Roche camp, was the next elected, followed by Diving Australian president Michael Murphy, who stood as an independent.

It is clear that Coates will retain a firm control over the AOC board, although he will be mindful that more than one-third of his electorate voted for his opponent Roche and he will need to follow through with changes to the AOC’s administrative structure and operations if he is to continue to enjoy the kind of support he has had for most of his 26-year tenure.