Explosive email reveals extent of feud between sport chiefs

The stinging email reveals the extent of the blistering feud between AOC president John Coates and AIS director Matthew Favier.

AOC president John Coates. Picture. Brett Costello

It’s the stinging email which removed one of the Australian Sports Commission’s top officials from any involvement with the Australian Olympic Committee’s planning for the Tokyo 2020.

On Monday, AOC president John Coates sent the email, which as been seen in full by The Australian, to Australian Institute of Sport director Matthew Favier — who had been a deputy chef de mission for the Rio Olympic Games and very much part of the planning process for Games time.

But, following an escalation of the tension between the two bodies, which saw Coates refuse to shake Australian Sports Commission chair John Wylie’s hand in the VIP room of the Nitro Athletics last Thursday, and then accuse him and Favier of trying to white ant him from the AOC’s top job ahead of the election at the May AGM, Coates severed that connection.

However, in a surprise move yesterday, Coates released a letter offering an olive branch to the ASC outlining a “draft frame work for a partnership agreement between our two organisations”.

But an AOC insider told The Australian that branch does not extend to Wylie or Favier who will have nothing to do with Tokyo 2020 planning from an AOC perspective.

The letter paints in full how dysfunctional the relationship between the two has become.

As well as Favier, Coates sent the email to all the members of the AOC executive including Mark Arbib, Craig Carracher, Nick Green, Nicole Livingstone and chair of the AOC Athletes’ Commission Steve Hooker.

The email is as follows:

“Matt,

[truncuated paragraph]

While the AOC has exclusive authority for the representation and participation of Australia at the Olympic Games, it is clearly in the best interests of our Team, the AOC, the AIS and the AOC’s member Olympic national federations that the AOC shares with and works with the AIS in our planning and preparations for Tokyo 2020 which have already begun, including by our delegation of Luke Pellegrini, Kitty Chiller, Danielle Woodward, Chris Fydler and Robert Vergouw who attended TOCOG’s NOC Open Day in Tokyo and other venues last week and followed with meetings organised by the Japan Olympic Committee with a number of their member Olympic national federations, courtesy of the AOC’s longstanding Co-operation Agreement with the Japan Olympic Committee and my unique position as Chair of the IOC Coordination Commission for the Games of the XXXII Olympiad and the Paralympic Games, Tokyo 2020.

However, in view of your interference in the free elections of the AOC, there can be no part for you in any joint planning and preparations.

I am copying Sports Minister, the Hon Greg Hunt, ASC Chair, John Wylie and CEO, Kate Palmer and look forward to hearing from them as to who they would like to nominate from the AIS to work with the AOC in your stead.”

It is the latest twist in the ongoing and what had been increasingly bitter battle between the two sporting bodies.

Following a poor Rio Games at which Australia slipped to 10th on the medal table sparking accusations of failed governance, Wylie, who controls the purse strings for Australian sport, sent that letter before Christmas, Wylie proposed that they “reset the working relationships. for the common good of Olympic sport in this country”. But he went on to suggest the ASC should have a role in deciding the Australian Olympic team’s chef de mission.

At the time, that sparked another public rebuke from Coates who accused Wylie of trying to compromise the independence of his organisation.

The Australian has gone to the Australian Sports Commission for comment.