The inside story of how John Coates saved the unsavable Games

John Coates opens up his relentless drive to make the Tokyo Olympics happen and the personal toll it took.

John Coates in the crowd at Tokyo Aquatics Centre, enjoying the fruits of his efforts

Cancel the Tokyo Olympics.

Australia’s most powerful and influential sporting official heard those words not once, but hundreds of times as he brazenly hurtled towards delivering the global spectacle that everyone else thought was doomed.

John Coates heard it from the Japanese public, from politicians, from medical experts, from his International Olympic Committee colleagues, from international sporting federations and some Australian “Olympic types” who didn’t believe it could happen.

There was a petition, which attracted more than 150,000 signatures and was addressed to Olympic bosses including Coates, demanding the Games be cancelled as Covid-19 cases soared in Tokyo and across the world.

One media commentator said it would be a “disaster” if the Games went ahead. A poll of residents in Tokyo found 80 per cent of respondents wanted the Games axed after another state of emergency was declared in the sprawling Japanese metropolis.

Unfazed under pressure, Coates did not flinch from his belief that the Games would proceed safely and successfully.

“Never ever,” he told News Corp in his first interview since the Olympic flame was extinguished.

“Whether I was foolish or not saying that … but my position was that I was committed, that the Games had to go ahead for the athletes, it wasn’t going to go away and I would do whatever I could to ensure that they went ahead.”

“There were people all around the world who didn’t see how it could happen …”

There were some close to him telling him early in the pandemic there would “never be a vaccine”. Others said postpone the Games by four years, and bump along Paris to 2028 and so on. If that couldn’t happen, there were those who said give Tokyo 2032 instead.

Then there were critics who thought the Japanese government and the IOC shouldn’t be making the call on the Olympics at all.

“There was a suggestion that we were too conflicted, both we and the government of Japan, to make a decision, and it that should be given to the United Nations,” Coates said, referencing former IOC member Kevan Gosper’s idea.

A lawyer by profession, Coates has had to develop a thick skin during his decades in sports administration. It served him well in the build-up to Tokyo, where he acted as the chairman of the co-ordination commission.

He paid a hefty price for pushing ahead with the Games with the public and personal criticism he received never-ending.

He was vilified in Japan in May when he said that the Games would proceed, even under a state of emergency, declaring: “The answer is absolutely yes.”

One Japan-based columnist wrote “the No.2 on the IOC’s register of entitled five-star, living-high-on-the-hog pomposities seems plenty expendable” and “perhaps Sydneysider Coates spent too many days with his head under the sand at Bondi Beach to be able to smell the ordure”.

After that, Coates and IOC president Thomas Bach stepped back from the media spotlight.

In early July, the Olympics organisers banned all spectators as the number of positive cases kept increasing, intensifying speculation the Games could be canned at the last minute.

“The big decision was no Japanese spectators and, you know, there’s always a worry at that stage if it’s bad enough that can the games go ahead?” Coates said. The IOC and Tokyo organising committee were satisfied it could.

“We would have loved spectators, but that was their decision. If we would have, we pushed and pushed (for crowds) and then it was found that there was some link between the participants and the cases in Japan and we would have been in trouble. So we really had no alternative but to agree with it, that they made those decisions as a government and that they would. It was the right decision. And that was it, as much as the broadcasters and as much as the public wanted to see the crowds.”

According to Coates, saving the Tokyo Olympics was not only the “most complex” project of his Olympics career but also emotionally taxing.

It involved long hours from his home office in Drummoyne, in the inner-west of Sydney. High-powered meetings often went all day and night — some finishing as late as 2am to fit in with European time zones.

A master at pulling the right strings to get the job done, trying to rearrange a postponed Olympics in the midst of a global pandemic was new ground for everyone.

“Tokyo is the most complex thing I’ve ever done in my life, it was a big job,” Coates said.

“It required a lot of time and discipline. And I called on every bit of experience I’ve had in all my Olympic life.

“And then, to be really the one directing the Brisbane campaign and candidature at the same time. It is by far the most difficult time of my life.”

To pull it off, Coates had to be more pragmatic than ever. There was little room for sentiment.

Months before the start of the Games, the head of the Tokyo Olympics organising committee, Yoshiro Mori, was at the centre of a sexism storm when he said female board directors talk too much at meetings.

A former prime minister, Mori apologised, but said he would not quit over the remarks.

But Coates, a long-time personal friend of Mori, stepped in, telling him he needed to stand down.

“It was very emotional for me … having to ask someone who became my very, very dear friend to apologise and then step aside,” he said.

There were other emotionally fraught moments, such as when Japanese organisers proposed not inviting North Korea to the Games. Again, Coates stepped in, even though he knew he wasn’t going to win a popularity contest.

The biggest fear around the Games was that it would turn into a superspreader event. That never eventuated, but Coates still bore the brunt of criticism.

“The figure I remember is that we did over 600,000 tests. I think the figure I remember was .02 per cent were the number of positives,” he said.

“There were days when there were no positives at the time, we got to the second week, the second group came in over that middle weekend and were having days with no positives among the athletes and officials.

“And we knew everything was fine there. You’re worried about those things. But I had full faith in all of the countermeasures that were put in place … and frankly, the largest number of positives was in the group of contractors and media from Japan.”

It wasn’t lost on anyone in the tight-knit Olympic world that the man who did most to save the unsavable Games and helped Brisbane secure the 2032 Olympics, was almost lost to the movement three years ago.

In 2017, Coates survived a campaign to remove him as president of the Australian Olympic Committee, but the fallout was bitter.

While Coates defeated his challenger Dani Roche, he famously refused to shake the hand of John Wylie, the former Australian Sports Commission chairman, who he believed was behind the push to oust him.

Only now, according to Coates, have the pair patched things up after bumping into each other at the opening of the Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre in Brisbane in May.

“He came over to me and congratulated me on what he perceived as Brisbane being likely to be selected (for 2032),” Coates said. “And he put out his hand and I did shake it on that occasion.”

On the same day Brisbane was formally awarded the 2032 Olympics, Coates found himself at the centre of another storm after an awkward exchange with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

A tightly edited clip from the conference appeared to show Coates “mansplaining” to the Premier about why she should attend the ceremony, triggering a furious backlash in Australia.

Coates was labelled “arrogant” and “appalling” with former Swimming Australia chief executive Leigh Russell branding the incident as “disgusting”.

Coates said he had discussed the exchange with Palaszczuk because she was feeling pressure from sections of the media to not attend.

Coates defended himself, saying he was only helping out the Premier because she had copped so much flak from flying to Japan for the 2032 announcement. Palaszczuk, herself, also played down the incident, but none of that stopped the critics from going after Coates.

After decades in the spotlight, Coates has worked out how to ignore the naysayers and continue on. It’s a hard-learnt skill but the one that helped save the unsavable Olympics and deliver another one to Australia.