IOC President heads to Australia for John Coates honors

The end of an era for the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) will be celebrated this weekend in Sydney.

After 30+ years, John Coates steps down as president of the AOC. In that time Coates has become one of the most influential figures in the Olympic Movement. His last big assignment: leading the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, postponed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AOC will hold its annual general meeting April 30 in Sydney when it will choose between two candidates to elect a successor to Coates. Ian Chesterman has served as Australia’s chef de mission to six winter Olympics and added Tokyo 2020 to his resume as AOC vice president.

Mark Stockwell is a triple Olympic medalist in swimming from Los Angeles 1984 where he met his future wife, U.S. Olympian Tracey Caulkins. He’s a Queensland resident, location of the upcoming 2032 Games in Brisbane.

The contest between the two is expected to be close in a race one insider described as “gentlemanly”.

The election Saturday in Sydney is one of a series of events this weekend for the AOC, with IOC President Thomas Bach on hand. He’ll put in an appearance at the meeting, and will speak at a dinner in honor of Coates Saturday night.

Sunday, Bach will attend the first full meeting of the newly formed board of in tropical Queensland.

Brisbane was the first city to be selected by the IOC to host the Olympics under a new procedure. Using a targeted approach that relies on consultations between prospective cities and the IOC, bidders no longer have to mount expensive international campaigns to win IOC favor. In the case of Brisbane, the IOC Executive Board identified the city in February 2021 as the preferred location for the 2032 Games. The full IOC ratified the choice a few months later at the Session in Tokyo.

Coates influenced the Brisbane campaign with his early advice for the city years ago, guiding the AOC to select Brisbane as the bid for the next Olympics in Australia. At nearly the same time four years ago Coates, as an IOC member, quietly led a group of colleagues to create the reformed bidding process that inevitably led to Brisbane.

While he will leave the AOC presidency this week, the 71-year-old will continue as IOC vice president until 2024. Deemed too valuable a member of the IOC to lose to retirement, Coates was granted an exception to the age 70 retirement rule to remain on the IOC through the Tokyo postponement – and beyond.