The decision by gold medal winning hockey player Danni Roche to nominate against John Coates for the presidency of the AOC is pitched as a challenge by an energetic 46-year-old who will take a $600,000 pay cut to do the job of a 66-year-old administrator.
If the contest tugs at a return to the old Olympic ideal of amateurism versus Coates's career as a professional, internationally connected IOC vice-president, it is just as much a collision between Melbourne and Sydney; the ASC and the AOC; the Olympic sports favoured under the ASC's Winning Edge program and those which are not. It's even Liberal Party versus Labor.
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Coates 'wants to find the right successor'
AOC media director Mike Tancred addresses the media regarding the challenge by Danni Roche to the position of President Australian Olympic Committee.
Roche is a board member of the ASC, the federal government's sport funding arm, chaired by Melbourne businessman John Wylie.
The Sydney-based Coates is fiercely protective of the AOC's independence from government, despite the majority of funding of Olympic sports coming from government coffers. Since the London Olympics, a disproportionate amount of those funds has been directed to sports that traditionally win medals at Summer Olympics.
However, when Olympic sports vote at the May AGM of the AOC, all are equal with two votes each.
Wylie's Winning Edge sports, such as cycling, swimming, hockey, sailing and rowing can be expected to support Roche but are vastly outnumbered by the sports which are not favoured for special funding.
Even swimming, whose president is former America's Cup skipper and Melbourne businessman John Bertrand, must split its two votes with water polo who are expected to back Coates.
Australia's seven Winter Olympic sports, together with the new ones, such as surfing whose introduction Coates supported for the 2020 Tokyo Games, are favoured to support Coates.
![Olympics star Danni Roche is a board member of the ASC, the federal government's sport funding arm.](/web/20170321185924im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/1/z/y/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gv1zu7.png/1490009647956.jpg)
On the surface, therefore, it would seem Coates, often described as "the best politician in Australia", has the numbers.
However, this ignores recent federal government support for Wylie, who had a fierce clash with Coates at an athletics meeting in Melbourne earlier this year.
Wylie's term as ASC chair was set to expire in September and it was expected new sports minister Greg Hunt would wait until the AOC election in May to see if Coates was returned as president.
Given the seemingly unbridgeable impasse between the two leaders of Australia's peak sports bodies, it would be smart politics to remove the man (Wylie) over whom he (Hunt) has control, should the man over whom he has no control (Coates) be re-elected.
But last week, Wylie was reappointed as ASC chair for a further three years, effective from September, meaning his term will conclude after the 2020 Olympics where Coates is the chief co-ordinator, the senior non-Japanese official responsible for staging the Tokyo Games.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, it is understood, interceded to reappoint Wylie.
A rumour that Coates had anointed Athletics Australia president Mark Arbib, a former Labor federal sports minister, as his successor may have spooked Canberra.
Following the resignation of long-term Coates ally Peter Montgomery, Arbib was elevated to the AOC executive but Ian Chesterman, Australia's chef de mission to Winter Olympics, moved up to vice-president, signalling his preferred status.
The federal government is therefore perceived to have picked sides, ironically validating Coates's long-held fears that all National Olympic Committees should be independent of government, a belief formed when Coates was a fledgling rowing official and Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser attempted to stop Australian athletes attending the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
After all, despite a conciliatory letter from Wylie to Coates just before Christmas, seeking a "re-set" of the relations between the two organisations, a request that the ASC have a say in the make-up of the AOC leadership team for Tokyo was guaranteed to infuriate Coates.
So, when the two men met at the athletics meeting in Melbourne, Coates's introductory words were to the effect that Wylie had attended to watch the javelin event, perhaps to "recruit a few spear throwers".
He was referring to reports Wylie was campaigning against him. The discussion deteriorated from there.
Coates's placatory move to install Matt Carroll, the former boss of Winning Edge sport sailing, as the new CEO of the AOC did not stall the push against him.
Coates's criticism on the closing days of the Rio Olympics that the Winning Edge program had failed and criticising Wylie's recruitment of Melbourne personalities with no competitive background in Olympic disciplines to head these sports, such as former cricket boss Malcolm Speed to cycling and Bertrand to swimming, angered many.
Roche was first out of the blocks with a bitter letter to Coates and Wylie hasn't changed course, appointing former Victorian Labor premier Steve Bracks, a keen recreational cyclist, as Speed's successor.
While the strong-willed Roche will reject any suggestion she is a Wylie puppet, pointing out she lives in Sydney, she is a director of AFL team St Kilda and close to the top end of Melbourne town.
For Coates, it's nearly 30 years since the Seoul Olympics when he was threatened by then CUB boss, Liberal treasurer and Carlton president John Elliott, during a party on the tennis court of the Australian ambassador's home.
Elliott wanted Melbourne to win the bid for the 1996 Olympics. Sydney got the 2000 Games.