Mega Thread RIO 2016 - General Discussion Thread for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games (3rd Aug to 21st Aug)

[imadodgyumpire]

Not sure there's any room for excuses the swimmers clearly underperformed.

So you're unimpressed by Seebohm winning the 50 backstroke in Paris overnight?

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Chip Le Grand has written a couple of pieces in today's Oz. One in the sports section is about the AOC and the Russian OC agreement on sharing doping authority information and this long one about the power struggle in Oz elite sports funding. Sounds a bit like the old Sydney v Melbourne shit fight, lots of egos and Coates seeing the Olympic movement and therefore AOC as the preminent sports body in Oz and wanting to control more of the federal government largess. The headline online is different to the paper version ( its Clash of titans dominates a different type of competition).

Winning Edge has clear advantage in Coates v Wylie sports rivalry
The headquarters of the Australian Olympic Committee take in the best of Sydney. From their modern office space inside the Museum of Contemporary Art building, which backs on to Circular Quay, the lords and ladies of the rings enjoy glittering views of the harbour, the Opera House and the bridge. It is from here that John Coates controls his stronghold — the city he all but owned in 2000, when Sydney hosted the Olympics. It’s a city he has kept a lease over ever since.

John Wylie’s place of work is quintessentially Melbourne. From the elegant Victorian terrace that houses the boutique but well-connected investment and advisory firm he founded last year, the chairman of the Australian Sports Commission looks through sash windows on to the MCG. From his Jolimont address it is a short, brisk walk to the top end of Collins Street, where Wylie’s business advice and strategic acumen have long been sought by billionaire businessmen and government heads.

From their twin towers these two powerbrokers of Australian sport are fiercely at odds. At its heart, their dispute is over the future of Olympic sport in Australia: how it is to be funded, how it is to be run and, most of all, who should make those calls. As Australia’s athletes return home from Rio, the spectacle of the man who runs our Olympic teams warring openly with the man responsible for the government agency that funds them is unedifying and engrossing. For some of these athletes, this battle could determine where they live, how they train and whether they stay in the game until Tokyo.

Should this be understood as a Sydney v Melbourne contest? Coates appears to think so. Certainly it is an idea being promoted by his two most trusted communicators: AOC spokesman Mike Tancred and The Sydney Morning Herald journalist Roy Masters.

It is no coincidence that the three national sports federation presidents cited by Coates last week when he lamented a failed “corporate model’’ of sports governance all live in Melbourne. The three are Swimming Australia president John Bertrand, Cycling Australia president Malcolm Speed and Equestrian Australia director Leigh Clifford. All have since hit back at Coates.

More accurately, the attacks on Bertrand, Speed and Clifford can be seen as a proxy attack against Wylie and the Winning Edge model developed by the ASC to determine how scarce government funds are be distributed within Australian sport......

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...y/news-story/ab699b07192ccb2cf10d231028f3078d

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

In case the paywall blocks you this is how Chip's article ends. I reckon he has made the right call given there wont be many budget freebies from the feds over the next few years.

Those who work in Australian sport are well accustomed to the ritual post-Olympic dust up over funding. Traditionally, it has been Coates who led the charge, arguing that more funding is needed to maintain our position on the medal tally or return Australia to its rightful place. This time, the dynamics have altered.

Everyone agrees that Australian sports needs more money. Given the state of the federal budget, almost no one expects government to provide it.

The sports recognise that, aside from establishing a new, substantial revenue stream such as a British-style national lottery, their financial viability depends on meeting the Winning Edge criteria, keeping their houses in order and attracting corporate sponsorship in a fiercely competitive market.

Some may agree with Coates but their futures depend on Wylie.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

I moved to Sydney in 1992 midway thru the Bid for the 2000 Games and saw a relatively junior AOC president of 2 years in John Coates, dwarfed by Oz IOC members, a member since 1977 Kevin Gosper ex head of Shell in London and a Melbourne guy who was a 400m runner (finished 4th in his semi in 1956 when only 6 made the finals not 8) and won a silver medal in 1956 4x400m relay team and Phil Coles, a Sydney guy, who was a sprint canoer who had been to 2 or 3 Olympics in the 1960's and then became an IOC member a decade earlier before I got to Sydney. But I observed at a relatively close distance that Coates was always wheeling and dealing and once Sydney won he started to become the dominate voice in the AOC. then when Sydney produced such a stunning Olympics he became all powerful being drafted by the IOC as a member in 2001 and straight away put onto important commissions like TV and Media Rights, Juridical, and then the ones resopnsible for the Games Co-ordination of Bejing, London and Rio. This paragraph from Chip's articles nicely sums up how Coates works.

The greater frustration for Coates is they are not his guys.

Coates is a formidable political operator whose influence reaches well beyond Australia’s shores into the halls of the International Olympic Committee, where he serves as senior vice-president, and the International Court of Arbitration for Sport, which he serves as president. As a Homebush High kid who couldn’t run because of a congenital hip disorder, Coates has had an extraordinary rise to become one of the most influential administrators in world sport.

Within the smaller though bitterly contested world of Australian sport politics, he combines Sussex Street-style patronage, IOC wheel-greasing and a lawyer’s eye for detail. He is an awful enemy to have. Those who challenge his power are likely to feel the sharp bite of a lawyer’s letter or the time-consuming burden of voluminous Freedom of Information requests.

And he has learnt about power and how to maintain it from guys like Samaranch at the IOC, and then the two FIFA Presidents first Joao Havelange of Brazil between 1974-1998 and the Sepp Blatter, that by giving funds to small sports who have equal votes you can lock in your power. At FIFA Havelange made small dependencies like the UK's Montserrat Island in the Caribbean which has a population of 4,000 have the same 1 equal vote for the presidency as Brazil 200m and 5 times world cup winner or Germany and Italy both 4 times winners and population of 80m and 60m respectively. From Chip's article

That Coates has chosen to pick so many recent fights — with Wylie and Sports Minister Sussan Ley in the months and days before the Rio Games, with the Australian swimming team during the Games, and with Bertrand, Speed and Clifford while Australian athletes were still competing in Rio — has dismayed people throughout Australian sport. There is a genuine groundswell, inside the AOC and beyond, against the AOC boss and the team hierarchy in Rio.

The threat to Coates is not that someone will take his job. Under the AOC constitution, there are more than 60 sports with equal voting rights. When it comes to electing the AOC board, larger sports such as swimming and athletics have no more influence than judo, archery or the many winter sports that benefit each year from the AOC’s $1 million donation to the Winter Olympic Institute. AOC life members, many awarded that honour by Coates, and his fellow IOC members in Australia also get a vote. Coates has served for 26 years as AOC president and says he will seek another four-year term in May. Under the AOC voting rules, it would take a truly Olympic effort for a challenger to unseat him.

The threat to Coates is he will stay in a job with diminished political clout.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Chips's article on page 7 of the front section of the weekend Oz, re the anti doping agreement with Russia and exchange of information, coaches and other sports related stuff signed in September 2011. Coates has kept this quiet until now. No wonder Coates supported Russia attending Rio.

AOC signed an anti-doping pact with Russia

A formal agreement between the Australian and Russian Olympic committees to exchange coaches and athletes and “co-operate in the fight against doping’’ remains in place, despite evidence of a Moscow-sanctioned drug-cheating regime across Olympic, winter Olympic and Paralympic sports.

The memorandum of co-operation was signed by AOC president John Coates and his ROC counterpart Alexander Zhukov at Sydney’s Sofitel Wentworth Hotel in September 2011 — about the time the Russian Ministry of Sport started directing its Moscow lab to “disappear’’ urine samples taken from cheating athletes.

Mr Coates did not declare the agreement or himself a signatory to it when he took part in an International Olympic Committee executive board meeting last month to determine Russia’s involvement in the Rio de Janeiro Games. He said there was no need. Mr Zhukov addressed the IOC meeting to argue the case for Russian athletes and the ROC. Mr Coates, an IOC vice-president, supported the decision to allow Russia to field a team in Rio. His position was at odds with the Australian government, the Australian Sports Commission and leading Australian athletes who wanted Russia excluded from the Games for its systematic and cynical doping regime. The International Paralympic Committee has since banned all Russian athletes from competing in Rio.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...a/news-story/4bbe6a53c9c09211e535956d056f2408


Haha you have to laugh at what it is supposed to promote, especially given the anti-gay stuff in the lead up to Sochi in Russia

The agreement signed by Mr Zhukov and Mr Coates commits Australia and Russia to “promote fundamental principles and values of Olympism’’, mutual respect, equity and fair play, and to have “zero tolerance to discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, social status and origin’’. It provides for the exchange of coaches, medical and sports personnel, teams and athletes, and the establishment of training camps for visiting athletes.

“Both parties will co-operate in the fight against doping and illegal and irregular betting in sport,’’ the memorandum reads.

It's still in force and was rolled over in 2014, when the initial period expired and the option was then taken up. despite MH17 being shot down and Oz backing the Ukraine's over the Russian's and Tony threatening to shirtfront Putin - all be it Ruggers style and not AFL Byron Pickett style.

An AOC spokesman confirmed the agreement was still in force. The agreement, initially effective until the end of 2014, was rolled over for a further four years. It remained in place despite Russia legislating gay-hate laws, annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and arming Ukrainian separatists who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and murdered 298 people, including 28 Australians.

Coates din't feel the need to tell anyone about it -nothing to see here attitude, despite who is implicated in the McLaren Report and who Coates dealt with.

Mr Coates told The Weekend Australian he did not declare the agreement or his being party to it to his fellow IOC board members as it did not represent a conflict.

He said neither the WADA-commissioned report by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren into doping in Russia nor an earlier report by former WADA boss Richard Pound implicated the ROC. “The consideration of the ROC’s participation in the Rio Games was never an issue arising from the two reports, only that of the Russian athletes,’’ Mr Coates said. “Other than providing guarantees of full co-operation by the ROC with ongoing investigations, the purpose of Mr Zhukov’s appearance before the IOC ... was ‘to present the case of the Russian athletes’. The agreement had absolutely no bearing on this case for the athletes.’’

Although the McLaren report did not implicate the ROC as an institution, it implicated an ROC member, former deputy sports minister Yuri Nagornykh, as a central figure in the doping scandal. From late 2011 to 2015, Mr Nagornykh gave orders to “save’’ or “quarantine’’ — code for destroy or keep — positive drug samples taken from Russian athletes.

Another sports ministry official implicated by the McLaren report, Irina Rodinova, worked for the ROC during the drug-tainted 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Mr Zhukov is not implicated in Russia’s doping scandal, but as ROC president he was involved in the preparations for Sochi. He is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the time of his meeting with Mr Coates at the Sofitel Wentworth, Mr Putin was Russia’s prime minister and Mr Zhukov his deputy.

And a Labor mate witnessed the signing, who just happens to have been appointed President of Athletics Australia earlier this year - Mark Arbib. Arbib became a senator in July 2008, was appointed Sports Minister in late 2010, was there for a couple years, overseeing part of the 2008-2012 Olympic sports funding period, but not responsible for the The Future of Sport in Australia, report by David Crawford led panel in 2009. When Coates was pissed off with the report I remember him referring to then Sports Minister Kate Ellis just a Ellis. Arbib did the usual ex NSW Labor federal senator trick, work for Packer, get involved in Rugby League has ended up on the ARL Commission, got on the board of Sydney FC, but has done stuff for the ARU, Cricket Australia and the FFA, before taking the Athletics Australia presidency.

The signing of the agreement between the AOC and ROC was witnessed by Australia’s then sports minister Mark Arbib. Mr Arbib is now president of Athletics Australia, which pushed for Russian track and field athletes to be banned from Rio.

Mr Coates said that if investigators found evidence the ROC was involved in state-sanctioned doping, he would recommend to the AOC it terminate the memorandum of co-operation. The AOC has similar agreements with the US, Italy, Japan and Canada.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/spo...a/news-story/4bbe6a53c9c09211e535956d056f2408

 

[Mateyman]

I wonder whether the new "nitro league" will get off the ground

 

[imadodgyumpire]

Nitro league?

 

[peternorth]

according to someone from vicgolf who was at the olympics, todd woodbridge said the best part of his career was winning gold in sydney.

i swear todd said the same thing about wimbledon and aust open

 

[JackNah_8]

I thought winning Wimbledon was his best moment

 

[ShinyMetal]

according to someone from vicgolf who was at the olympics, todd woodbridge said the best part of his career was winning gold in sydney.

That would funny if he said that considering he and Woodforde won Silver in Sydney

Atlanta on the other hand when they won Gold might be

 

[Mateyman]

Nitro league?

The Athletics Australia initiative for a "Big Bash style league" in February brought in by Mark Arbib.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

I'm not sure what difference that'd make?

I'd prefer the diamond league being shown here. Even if it was a delayed broadcast on a secondary channel. Same with this swimming meet in Paris atm.

 

[Mateyman]

I'm not sure what difference that'd make?

I'd prefer the diamond league being shown here. Even if it was a delayed broadcast on a secondary channel. Same with this swimming meet in Paris atm.

Could be good for developing talent and keeping more people in the sport though if it was properly implemented. Much more incentive to keep grafting away and try to get a decent salary and be shown on prime time TV than the current setup, if you're a talented runner but not (yet) at Olympic level .

 

[peternorth]

I thought winning Wimbledon was his best moment

exactly. haha. its funny when a sportsman/woman wins something they say its a dream come true/best win ever. nek minnut (insert tournament) is my favourite/best win ever.

That would funny if he said that considering he and Woodforde won Silver in Sydney

Atlanta on the other hand when they won Gold might be

hahaha. really? hahaha the bloke on radio mustve gotten it wrong too!

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

On Offsiders this morning Roy Masters gave a bit of an insight into what's going on between AOC and ASC. Now I know some footy fans don't like Roy because he enjoys having a dig at AFL, when he can, and played the AFL v NRL game over Dank and doping for 3 years, but he is cagey and well connected. He was on the board of ASC for 25 years between 1985 and 2010 so he knows the players and where the bodies are buried. He also is close to Coates.

He made the good point this morning that some sports like Sailing don't need to be in an AIS set up, he said give them the money directly and let them do their thing as they get results, whereas others like athletics, cycling, basketball should be in an AIS type set up as a centre of excellence with the best coaches, sports science and facilities available. He said he expects cycling to come back into the AIS set up soon. He makes the good point that the Winning Edge shouldn't be a one size fits all strategy. I agree with him on that. Interestingly he said Coates at Rio, actually starting before Rio, was brought in by the IOC to handle the Russian ban situation and during the games spent a lot of time with the Japanese delegation as he Chairman of the IOC's Tokyo Games Co-ordination Commission. But he did say the shit fight has to be sorted out soon and can't drag on until Tokyo. Watch from 18.05.

http://www.abc.net.au/sport/offsiders/content/2016/s4528083.htm

 

[drd23]

Isn't the Winning Edge funding model the same as what Great Britain uses?

If so, why is it that such a funding model can work for there (especially for sports like rowing and cycling which Masters specifically mentioned) but can't work here as he asserted?

 

[ozgamer]

Isn't the Winning Edge funding model the same as what Great Britain uses?

If so, why is it that such a funding model can work for there (especially for sports like rowing and cycling which Masters specifically mentioned) but can't work here as he asserted?

They (the UK) spend more. They have a bigger budget to work with due to the National Lottery which could be tricky here since our lotteries operate differently. It does come at a price. Those sports that receive that little to no funding will be heavily compromised.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/10...mbles-on-with-threat-of-formal-challenge.html

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...why-team-gb-is-winning-so-many-olympic-medals

 

[drd23]

I know that GB spends far more than Australia does.

My point is in regards to Roy Masters' assertion during his appearance on ABC's Outsiders that Winning Edge doesn't work for cycling and rowing - without any reason given as to why. It would seem to me that there would need to be a very good reason to change or even completely discard a system that hasn't had time to work and is based on a system elsewhere that clearly works

 

[Hawthorn United]

according to someone from vicgolf who was at the olympics, todd woodbridge said the best part of his career was winning gold in sydney.

i swear todd said the same thing about wimbledon and aust open

Must be one of those lines people just wheel out. Like "He's the last off the track in training."

Use it once or twice, no one checks, but after a while... people take notice and it doesn't make sense.

 

[peternorth]

Must be one of those lines people just wheel out. Like "He's the last off the track in training."

Use it once or twice, no one checks, but after a while... people take notice and it doesn't make sense.

a valid point HU. i recall hazily during this footy season someone at a club was asked about a particular player. it may have been brent harvey and a north official. yep, first to arrive, last to leave was trotted out. in addition, he's the best trainer.

 

[ozgamer]

I know that GB spends far more than Australia does.

My point is in regards to Roy Masters' assertion during his appearance on ABC's Outsiders that Winning Edge doesn't work for cycling and rowing - without any reason given as to why. It would seem to me that there would need to be a very good reason to change or even completely discard a system that hasn't had time to work and is based on a system elsewhere that clearly works

We are only told how much is spent on each sport. We are not told how the funds are utilized within each sport. Maybe Aussie Cycling and Rowing are doing something wrong on this.

 

[Wallaby]

They (the UK) spend more. They have a bigger budget to work with due to the National Lottery which could be tricky here since our lotteries operate differently. It does come at a price. Those sports that receive that little to no funding will be heavily compromised.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/10...mbles-on-with-threat-of-formal-challenge.html

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...why-team-gb-is-winning-so-many-olympic-medals

The UK funnels money out of the pockets of the poor (those vast majority of those who buy lottery tickets - usually the scratch-off kind) and gives it to wealthy private school kids who show some aptitude in wealthy private school sports - rowing, sailing, equestrian, cycling. Sports that require money to get started in.

 

[estibador]

The UK funnels money out of the pockets of the poor (those vast majority of those who buy lottery tickets - usually the scratch-off kind) and gives it to wealthy private school kids who show some aptitude in wealthy private school sports - rowing, sailing, equestrian, cycling. Sports that require money to get started in.

Sounds like how Victorian AFL clubs finance themselves.

*North the honourable exception

 

[JackNah_8]

talks of a new funding system:

AUSTRALIAN Sports Commission boss John Wylie has conceded the nation’s sports leaders need to kiss and make up as a radical new funding model is considered to chase more Olympic Gold.

A new online lottery has been proposed to pour gambling revenue into sports and individual codes have been urged to seek commercial partnerships to help fund elite athletes.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/na...y/news-story/cc5549d4901f49fd58b13b8d6becabbb

 

[ozgamer]

I like how those 4 team officials that were responsible for the ticketing scandal re: Rio (Boomers vs Serbia semifinal) were allowed to escape public scrutiny and then a suitable punishment while our "Naughty Nine" were shamed in front of the cameras because they were the unfortunate ones detained.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/30/aoc-investigation-reveals-ticket-recycling

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/09/01/no-aoc-sanctions-rio-ticket-tamperers