Coates takes aim at AIS boss Favier

AOC boss John Coates has again aimed both barrels at one of the Australian Sports Commission’s most senior officials.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates, left, in Sapporo, Japan, yesterday for the Asian Winter Games

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates has again aimed both barrels at one of the Australian Sports Commission’s most senior officials in a further sign of how broken the relationship between the two powerful sporting organisations is.

The latest in a string of attacks that have lasted well over a week came after The Australian revealed an email in which Coates removed Australian Institute of Sport director Matthew Favier from the AOC’s planning for the Tokyo 2020 Games, and denied him any future role.

In that email — which was sent to all members of the AOC executive, Health Minister Greg Hunt, ASC chair John Wylie and freshly minted ASC chief executive Kate Palmer — Coates pointed to Favier’s “closing remarks to a leadership group of sports managers at a meeting in Canberra last October” which included accusations of a “code of silence”.

Coates also claimed Favier had said: “Fiona De Jong is leaving because­ of Coates — sports should be looking at Coates’ consultancy ($700k pa) — tell your CEOs now is your time to get rid of Coates or words to this effect.”

In the latest twist, The Australian can reveal that following the Coates email, Favier replied to the AOC supremo in a bid to clear the air and set up a constructive working relationship.

The Australian understands Favier — who had been the deputy chef de mission for the Rio Olympic Games and very much part of the AOC planning process — addressed the key allegations in Coates’s email.

But despite the conciliatory tone, on Friday Coates fired back an angry reply.

The stinging rebuke is a further sign of the bitter relationship between the leaders of the two organisations.

The Australian asked the ASC whether Favier wanted to comment on Coates’s reply but he declined.

The ASC has avoided buying into the ongoing barrage, instead telling The Australian it would “welcome a more constructive working relationship between the two organisations”.

But asked directly whether or not Favier denied Coates’s allegation about his comments at the meeting, the ASC said there would be no comment.

An ASC insider told The Australian last week the atmosphere between the two bodies — which control the fate of Australia’s Olympic ambitions — was “poisonous”.

The latest blast from Coates follows an extra­ordinary week of email attacks from the AOC president aimed at Wylie, who controls the funding of Australian sport, and Favier.

Such is the animosity Sports Minister Hunt has offered to mediat­e peace talks between the pair. The Australian understands that on his return from the Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, today, Coates’s next move will be to secure that meeting.

The tension has been building since Australia’s poor performance under a new ASC-designed funding model at the Rio Olympics, where they slipped to 10th on the medal table.

That boiled over in an ugly confrontation at the hugely successful Nitro Athletics series in Melbourne when Coates refused to shake Wylie’s hand and then accused him of white-anting him ahead of his re-election at the AOC AGM in May.

In a surprise move last week, Coates released a letter offering an olive branch to the ASC, outlining a “draft framework for a partnership agreement between our two organisations”. But an AOC insider told The Australian that was not a backdown and the peace deal did not extend­ to Wylie or Favier.

Instead the AOC would like to continue to work with the AIS staff who were part of the Rio Games team. In reply the ASC said it would give the correspondence the “appropriate consideration”.

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