Oarsome one Nick Green quits AOC post amid row

One of Australia’s most celebrated Olympians has quit the AOC board amid a rancorous struggle for control.

John Coates and Nick Green following Green’s appointment to lead the Olympic team in London.

One of Australia’s most celebrated Olympians has quit the Australian Olympic Committee board amid an increasingly rancorous struggle for control between long-serving president John Coates and challenger Danielle Roche.

Nick Green, a member of the Oarsome Foursome crew that won consecutive gold medals in Barcelona and Atlanta, and an AOC board member for 11 years, has informed Coates of his decision not to stand for re-election.

Although Green’s decision is due partly to a serious illness in his family, he is understood to be frustrated with the direction of the AOC under Coates and convinced of the need for generational ­renewal within Australia’s Olympic movement.

Green has also flagged he will step down as president of the Victorian Olympic Council. He will remain involved in Olympic sport as chief executive of Cycling Australia.

The Coates camp is confident it has enough support among Olympic sports to retain control of the AOC in the face of the challenge by Roche, an Olympic gold medallist with the 1996 Hockeyroos. It is the first challenge to Coates since he succeeded Kevan Gosper in 1990.

Athletics Australia president Mark Arbib, a former sports minister who last year joined the AOC board with Coates’s support, has declared his sport will back the ­incumbent in the May 6 ballot. Most winter sports and smaller summer sports are also expected to vote for Coates.

Green’s decision to quit the AOC has exposed deep ­divisions in a body hit by a post-Rio ­exodus of senior staff, ­including the most recent chief executive, Fiona De Jong. Green and De Jong were seen at times as potential successors to Coates.

De Jong was promoted to AOC chief executive a year before the Rio Olympics and quit at the end of last year amid a falling out with AOC media director Mike Tancred. Her dispute with ­Tancred, revealed last week by The Australian, is with AOC ­lawyers.

Green, an Olympic and world champion in Coates’s own sport of rowing, was anointed by him as Australia’s chef de mission for the 2012 London Games — the first time someone other than Coates had performed the role since 1988.

Like De Jong, Green’s experience ended unhappily and in ­feud with Tancred. After Australia’s disappointing London performance, Tancred submitted to the AOC board a post-mortem report highly critical of Green’s stewardship which angered board members and infuriated Green.