Coates says Wylie suffers from ‘relevancy deprivation’

The Australian Olympic Committee boss is angered by John Wylie’s call for a ‘unity ticket’ for the build-up to Tokyo.

Australian Olympic Committee boss John Coates, pictured, does not speak to with Australian Sports Commission chair John Wylie. Picture AAP

Australian Olympic Committee boss John Coates says Australian Sports Commission chair John Wylie is suffering from “relevance deprivation syndrome”.

The Australian’s investigation into the crippling funding cuts across some Olympic sports and scrutiny of the ASC’s multi-million-dollar spend on consultants prompted Wylie to write a column for this newspaper.

Coates’s latest jab came after he read Wylie’s column, which appealed for a “unity ticket” between the AOC and ASC and said the “right time to review high-performance programs” will be after the Tokyo Olympics.

“Remember he finishes up after Tokyo,” Coates told The Australian. “In respect to his commentary we agree, there is a perfect co-operation between the bodies working for the athletes, but we disagree with fixing this funding issue until after the Games. It needs to be now. Not in six months.

“The sports don’t want to know if their funding is good for the next six months. They want to know for the next four years, so they can go ahead and employ coaches.

“As for the rest, these are mutterings of a man appearing to suffer from relevancy deprivation.”

He added: “No one cares what John Coates and John Wylie think or say, none of the athletes are following what John Wylie and John Coates are saying, most of them wouldn’t know who we are. The rowers might know me, but not many others, nor should they.”

The Australian has revealed the latest team facing huge funding cuts is the Hockeyroos, who could lose 60 per cent of their budget, while the Games Over investigation has also uncovered the severe financial plights of sports unable to afford coaches just months out from Tokyo.

Australian Sports Commission chair John Wylie. Picture: Aaron Francis

Coates and Wylie have had a long-running feud — with tensions peaking when former hockey player Danni Roche challenged for the AOC presidency in 2017. Coates said Roche’s candidacy was driven by Wylie to exert influence over the Olympic movement.

It was in April 2017 Coates confessed to calling Wylie a “c...” at the Nitro athletics event in Melbourne in February of that year. Coates told Fairfax Media he called Wylie a “liar” and “c...” to his face after the ASC chief attempted to shake hands with him at the event.

“I don’t shake hands with liars,” Coates said he told Wylie. “I don’t shake hands with c...s.”

Last week Coates dubbed Wylie’s ASC multi-million-dollar spend on consultants “incomprehensible”.

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Meanwhile, AOC chief executive Matt Carroll told The Australian he called Wylie after his column in The Australian to quiz him on his “unity ticket” line.

Carroll said while Coates and Wylie did not talk, he believed there was a strong working relationship between the AOC and the ASC arms of the AIS and Sport Australia.

“We are working very closely with Sport Australia, and have been for some time. Will the two Johns speak? No, but that’s OK,” Carroll said. “John Coates leaves me to manage the relationship with Sport Australia and the AIS. Former CEO Kate Palmer recognised that and so does AIS chief Peter Conde.

“The new acting ASC CEO dropped in last Friday. That’s why I was quite amazed with the ‘unity ticket’ business when I read it.”

Carroll also told Wylie that “criticism of the Australian Sports Commission and the AIS has not come from the Australian Olympic Committee”.

“I said to him: ‘we have this good working relationship, why would I want to damage that? It’s very important’,” Carroll said. “It’s exactly what John Wylie raised in his article, for the two organisations to work together and we do. We don’t always agree.

“I explained to him I met with Peter Conde and the national institute state directors last Wednesday in Melbourne and we had a good discussion … we had a good range of topics.”

Carroll recently took Conde through some of the issues that have been raised with him about sports. “I took him through a number of issues that the sports have with the funding model … some things they thought could be done better or fairer,” he said. “It was a good open discussion.”

Carroll said he has told the AIS that they “should not be in the business of picking winners”. He said $60m would make a huge difference to Australia’s Olympic preparations.

“We are not talking hundreds of millions of dollars. We put out there if they put back in the $60m we lost over the last decade, then that would do wondrous things for the Olympic sports,” Carroll said.