Sacred part of nation’s culture needs a voice to unify splinters

No matter what the result of the vote for the AOC presidency, John Coates legacy has been tarnished.

Picture John Coates just 12 months ago. Smooth? You could play marbles on him. Cool? You could chill your beer on his forehead. Powerful? He could dead lift Parliament House and a marble wouldn’t move, not a drop of beer would go overboard.

It is a different image now. No matter what the result of tomorrow’s vote for the presidency of the Australian Olympic Committee, a position Coates has held in a headlock since 1990, there are marbles all over the floor.

Watch out for the spilt beer. And we are still to see if Coates can lift himself off the floor.

If Coates’ chance of being elected for another three years are beginning to wobble, the man himself seems to be unravelling.

It is a fair observation given what he told veteran Olympic reporter and colleague Nicole Jeffery in an exclusive interview in The Australian yesterday.

Take this self-praise from the man who is also a vice-president of the International Olympic Committee: “Someone has to go out there and fight for the sports.’’

Well, yes, that sounds right given that Coates is president of the AOC and is paid about $715,000 per annum.

If he was not the person waging war to get more money for sport then we would be staggered and he wouldn’t be doing his job. It is a banal, panicked observation from a man who feels and is hurting that his highfalutin place in sport — here and internationally — is being attacked like never before.

And in tough budget times it would only be expected from the man who leads the Australian Olympic movement that he would reinvigorate his fundraising fervour.

This is such a bizarre touch, for whatever money Coates raises would go, of course, to the Australian Sports Commission, which is chaired by John Wylie.

And it is the ASC chairman whom Coates accuses of using Danielle Roche, his challenger at tomorrow night’s vote, as being the puppet of Wylie. It is disrespectful and unbecoming of a man who is vice-president of the IOC.

And former NSW premier and one-time chief executive of Basketball Australia Kristina Keneally has called Coates to account. She told The Australian yesterday Coates’ claim was a “pathetic last grab to hang on to power’’. It is hard to disagree. “For God’s sake John Coates, at least be original in your insults,’’ Keneally said.

“Danni Roche is a highly qualified, well-educated businesswoman and sports administrator. She’s an Olympic gold medallist. Dare I say it, she’s nobody’s puppet and girl,” Keneally said.

No matter what the result of the vote for the AOC presidency, Coates’ legacy has been tarnished. Statements like this from Keneally ensure the damage will be extensive. “I dealt with the AOC during my tenure at Basketball Australia. I cannot put my hand on my heart and say the AOC operated in the sport’s best interests.

“The AOC needs a clean sweep and a fresh approach. Roche is an impressive candidate and a woman of courage. Our athletes deserve an AOC that works for them.’’

It appears a fact that little has changed under Coates. He said yesterday: “Because of the indignity with which the campaign has been run, the AOC needs to come out with some guidelines for candidatures at elections and ... maybe provide an opportunity where you get the sports together and you can have some presentations and do it all in one go.

“That’s what we do at the IOC on the election of host cities and for the last presidential election, so I think we need some guidelines so if you want to be a candidate for any position, these are the rules that you abide by, and you have some group that oversees that,” he said.

To be so unprepared, so unstructured is a telling admission from Coates. It is also cheeky to talk of the “indignity” of the campaign. It was Coates who said to Wylie when he ran into the ASC chairman at an athletics meeting earlier in the year that “I don’t shake hands with liars. I don’t shake hands with c---s.”

There is a bigger lesson to be learnt from the embarrassment that is the AOC elections. Australia lacks a voice of sport. Lots of people — athletes, administrators, media commentators — have had a say but none have had the authority to control and counsel as the parties went to war.

Australia desperately needs a federal sports minister with clout. Presently Greg Hunt has the job but his influence is limited and tepid because his major portfolio of health can be overwhelming.

His only contribution, publicly at least, to the damaging AOC debate has been to deny that Malcolm Turnbull played a role in Wylie’s reappointment earlier this year as head of the ASC.

The country needs a minister whose primary portfolio is sport. The person would have much to do and not all of it would be involved with Coates and Roche. Most of all the minister would be the guardian of the nation’s sporting ethos, would encourage participation, ensure athletes have the best preparation for the highest competition and that children have access to compete in all codes and disciplines and at every level.

Sport is a sacred part of the nation’s culture but the battle for the AOC presidency shows it does not always have the will to nurture and protect itself from its own hubris.