The AOC’s Rio ban on Boomers, Opals and Matildas

While fans were cheering Boomers and Opals at the Olympics, the AOC was working to strike the names from the record.

While Australian sports fans were cheering our Kookaburras, Matildas, Boomers and Opals at the Rio Olympics, the Australian Olympic Committee was working behind the scenes to strike these names from the public record.

Under the AOC’s strict sponsorship protections, the Hockeyroos could be referred to only as the Australian women’s hockey team and the Dolphins as the Australian swim team for the duration of the Games.

The Boomers could be referred to only as the Australian men’s basketball team while the Opals and Matil­das officially became Australia’s women’s basketball and soccer teams.

The prohibition covered all communications from the nat­ional sporting federations and Twitter accounts of individual athletes. The AOC’s policing of sporting nomenclature even ­extended to hashtags; Swimming Australia was rebuked for using its #ourteam hashtag instead of the AOC’s preferred #oneteam. The terms of the prohibition were spelled out in AOC team rules ­issued to all sports and re­iterated by AOC media director Mike Tancred in a meeting with sports media staff.

The ban is designed to prevent any association between the Olympics and Australian team sponsors such as Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, which supports the Dolphins, rowing and volleyball, and Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue, which sponsors the Kookaburras.

Hockey Australia, one of the national sports federations most affected by the ban, has nominated Hockeyroos gold medallist Danielle Roche to challenge the incumbent John Coates as AOC president. She has vowed to improve governance of the AOC and redirect funding away from AOC running expenses towards cash-poor sports and athletes.

AOC chief financial officer Sue O’Donnell confirmed the May 6 vote to decide control of Australia’s Olympic movement will be conducted by secret ballot.

The AOC’s war on team nicknames did not begin in Rio, but for those new to Australia’s “Olympic family’’ the curb on accepted language grated. As one sports chief reflected, it was frustrating to ditch a brand readily identified with by athletes and the public merely to satisfy the controlling instincts of the AOC.

It was also futile. Commentators with Olympic broadcaster the Seven Network referred to the Boomers, Opals and Matildas throughout the campaign.

The AOC’s hardline protection of its Olympic patch exacerbated already strained relation­ships with Australia’s swim team, which decorated its space in the Olympic village with Dolphins-branded posters.

These tensions culminated in false accusations, published by The Sydney Morning Herald, that team members tore down AOC-approved posters and replaced them with their own.

More than six months after the Games, though, the relationship between the senior figures within the AOC and Swimming Australia remains poisonous.