A year ago the biathlon – a combination of target shooting and cross-country skiing – was de-recognised as an official sport by the Australian Sports Commission, a decision that means its athletes can't compete in university games.
Last Friday, Danni Roche asked the sport's five-member board, in a one-hour Skype call, to help elect her president of the Australian Olympic Committee. The biathletes had one question on their mind: was Roche's candidacy a Trojan Horse for sports commission chairman John Wylie, who they blamed for threatening the very existence of their sport.
Their views count. The tiny Australian Biathlon Association will have as much say as the mighty Swimming Australia when 93 sports representatives cast their ballots on Saturday in the Foundation Hall of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, a beautiful art deco building overlooking Circular Quay's ferry terminal and the Sydney Opera House.
On Friday night Coates will host a cocktail party for delegates attending the committee's annual meeting on the art museum's roof-top balcony. A fixture on the Olympic calendar, the forecast is for mostly clear skies and 16 degrees. Roche plans to attend.
Class, politics and money
Since Roche, 46, a stockbroker with Ord Minnett and a former athlete who played for the Australian women's hockey team, who won gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, launched her initially quixotic challenge in March to the powerful incumbent, John Coates, the election has morphed into a contest far beyond the merits of two sporting administrators. It has become a wrestle over class, politics and money, ethics, feminism and age.
Business leaders – presumably at the behest of Coates and Wylie – have done more public lobbying over the contest than last year's selection of the new Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe.
On paper, the working-class lawyer Coates, 66, should be impregnable. Over 27 years on uncontested power he has racked up chits in Australian sport and around the world. He's among the five most senior members of the International Olympic Commission executive, which oversees the Olympic movement worldwide, and is chairman of the coordination committee of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
He advised Athletics Australia how to successfully convince authorities just last week to keep the 50km road race at Tokyo, a decision that could be worth a precious gold medal for Victorian Jared Tallent, who won the event at the 2012 London Olympics.
But the campaign to elect Roche, an early political supporter of Malcolm Turnbull, has been devastatingly effective. Coates has been unable to shake off the image that he tolerated, and sometimes participated in, bullying of the organisation's small staff. Even Don Argus, a former BHP Billiton chairman, expressed concern about sports administrators who stay in their jobs too long.
Coates ahead
One of Roche's backers expects Coates to win 50 votes, and possibly 60, which would be an easy victory. A Coates ally said many sporting federations were keeping their preference secret, making it hard to judge the numbers. "If you were a bookmaker, you'd have John winning just," says John Bertrand, the chairman of Swimming Australia, which plans to vote for Roche.
Even if they lose, Roche's camp feel they will have shamed Coates into toning down his tough approach, which seemed to permeate through the organisation. AOC's media director Mike Tancred was forced to step down after the details of a bullying complaint by former chief executive Fiona de Jong were published. That a CEO would feel intimidated by Tancred is an indication of how little real power she had.
"What I am glad that has at least come from this is that it has exposed some of the culture and governance issues at the AOC," Bertrand says.
Coates' team, and some who haven't taken sides, argue the contest has unnecessarily damaged the AOC's reputation. Trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox, who is a friend of Coates and Roche's father, Ken, called for a negotiated transition.
"This is a US election-style campaign where you go after the individual," says one Coates ally. "No one in sport has seen a campaign before like this and that's what you see when you bring in political consultants."
Forceful and polarising
Those who served with Roche on sportings boards say the 1996 Atlanta hockey gold medallist was a strong presence. At Hockey Australia, its former president Stuart Grimshaw, who played for New Zealand at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and was chief executive of Bank of Queensland from 2011 to 2014, found Roche prepared to put her reputation on the line to help change the organisation's culture.
"Look, she probably was a bit forceful and polarising, but what I will say is that I admired her for working hard to bring about change," he says. "She made the tough calls on people, and that can be divisive. But that is what happens when you need change. Things can get personal."
With Coates' allies across the sporting world reporting back to him, Roche has been concentrating on sporting organisations she believes she has a shot at winning. They have found her professional and polished. "She says all the rights things," one says.
Whoever wins, the administration of the Olympics is likely to change. Roche has said that she will give far more autonomy to the organisation's chief executive, Matt Carroll, who started this week. Coates has acknowledged that he'll have to find a successor, and said that he will act more like a traditional chairman who allows his CEO to make the day-to-day decisions.
One project he is looking at is the prospect of Brisbane bidding for an Olympics. A feasibility study has been authorised to stage a games in south-east Queensland, which he is promising to use his influence to push – although those games could be 15 years away. Coates would be in his 80s.
"I have got the experience and what I want to do, whether it's 2028 or 2032, is to champion that both in Australia and internationally," he told the ABC's 7.30 on Thursday.
'Hands on the money'
Although he oversees the body that finances most future and current Olympic athletes, Wylie has been publicly invisible. Coates' side claim he's been lobbying for Roche, who's a Sports Commission board member, but couldn't provide proof. (Wylie didn't respond to a request for comment. The commission declined to comment.)
Former Liberal leader John Hewson, who advises Coates how to invest the Olympic Foundation's $145 million, says he thinks Roche is being used to help Wylie's commission get access to the funds. "Seems to me some people have been pretty keen to get their hands on that money," he says.
With the federal budget under pressure for almost a decade, sports funding has been declining in real terms for eight years. So has Australia's Olympic performances, from 58 medals in Sydney in 2000 to 29 in Rio de Janeiro last year.
Wylie, who was made chairman of the commission in 2012, told Coates in December he wanted to help choose the chef de mission (team manager) for the Olympics. Coates responded by putting the proposal on the internet, embarrassing Wylie.
After Coates heard that Wylie had approached several people to stand against him, which Wylie denied, the two had a verbal fight at an athletics meet in Melbourne on February 11. In an interview with AFR Weekend that has reverberated through the campaign, Coates acknowledged he called Wylie a liar and said to him, "I don't shake hands with c---s".
Some observers thought Coates boasted about the confrontation to look tough. In reality, he reluctantly described his side of the conversation and wouldn't reveal Wylie's comments to him, apart from saying they included swearing too.
Welcome surprise
Last September the Australian Biathlon Association got a welcome surprise: a $50,000 grant from Coates' Olympic Committee. The money is being used to try to get a competitor into the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea next year. After hearing about its problems, Roche set up a meeting with the sports commission's new chief executive, who expressed sympathy at its plight.
On Thursday the Australian Biathlon board was "split down the middle" on who to support, according to president Grant Flanagan, whereas the the AOC's Athletes' Commission has indicated it would use its vote to back Coates.
Flanagan sounded a little concerned about Roche's links to Wylie. "They are both good people and the biggest worry for us is if the sports commission gets too closely entwined with the AOC and they won't be an advocate for the smaller sports that are ignored by the sports commission," he says. "On Monday we'll be irrelevant anyway."
