John Dowling Coates
Encyclopedia
Companions of the Order of Australia
This is a list of Companions of the Order of Australia.Notes:- Government Gazette special announcements :- It's an Honour :* * * **There are currently 427 entries in this list....
(born 7 May 1950) is an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n lawyer, sports administrator and businessman.
He is a member of the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
(IOC) and is the current president of the Australian Olympic Committee
Australian Olympic Committee
The Australian Olympic Committee is the National Olympic Committee in Australia for the Olympic Games movement. It is a non-profit organisation that selects teams, and raises funds to send Australian competitors to Olympic events organised by the International Olympic Committee .-Background:The...
and chairman of the Australian Olympic Foundation
Australian Olympic Foundation
The Australian Olympic Foundation is a foundation established to help future Australian athletes develop and compete at an Olympic level.In February 1996, the Foundation was constituted by Deed of Settlement between Julius L Patching as Settlor and the Australian Olympic Foundation Limited an...
.
Personal
Born in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, the son of a solicitor, Coates was brought up in the Sydney suburb of Strathfield
Strathfield, New South Wales
Strathfield is an Inner West suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Strathfield is located 14 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre of the local government area of the Municipality of Strathfield...
. He attended Homebush Boys High School
Homebush Boys High School
Homebush Boys High School, founded in 1936, is a comprehensive public high school for boys. It is located in Homebush, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....
. He was keen on sports at school, captaining a representative cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
XI. He took a day off school in early 1964 to watch Richie Benaud
Richie Benaud
Richard "Richie" Benaud OBE is a former Australian cricketer who, since his retirement from international cricket in 1964, has become a highly regarded commentator on the game....
play his last test match, and a photograph appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald the next day of a beaming Coates alongside Benaud as he left the field of play. Failing to make the school's senior cricket sides he took up rowing when the school introduced the sport in 1966, coxing the school's boats to victories over more experienced crews from established rowing schools at several regattas.
After leaving school he qualified as a solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
.
The father of six children, he is now divorced.
Career as a sports administrator
Having remained involved with the sport of rowing, including a stint coaching the Newington CollegeNewington College
Newington College is an independent, Uniting Church, day and boarding school for boys, located in Stanmore, an inner-western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....
crews, Coates was in 1978 elected to the (now defunct) position of Honorary Secretary of the Australian Amateur Rowing Council (now Rowing Australia
Rowing Australia
Rowing Australia is the governing body for the sport of rowing in Australia.Established in 1925, it is the only organisation recognised by the Federation Internationale des Societies d’Aviron , the Australian Sports Commission , and the Australian Olympic Committee , to conduct rowing activities...
) and in 1983 became President (and from 1984 Chairman). He continued in this role until 1988.
Coates has been virtually a fixture at the Summer Olympics for more than 30 years, having been Australian Olympic Team Rowing Section Manager at the Montreal Games (1976), Administration Director at the Moscow Games (1980), Deputy Chef de mission at the Los Angeles Games (1984), and Chef de mission at the Seoul (1988), Barcelona (1992), Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008) Games.
Other official positions he has held include:
- member of the Australian Olympic CommitteeAustralian Olympic CommitteeThe Australian Olympic Committee is the National Olympic Committee in Australia for the Olympic Games movement. It is a non-profit organisation that selects teams, and raises funds to send Australian competitors to Olympic events organised by the International Olympic Committee .-Background:The...
since 1982 having been Vice-President (1985–1990) then President since 1990 - a director (1985) and then Deputy Chairman (1986–1989) of the Australian Institute of SportAustralian Institute of SportThe Australian Institute of Sport is a sports training institution in Australia with world class facilities and support services. The Institute's headquarters is situated in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. The 66.0 hectare site campus is in the northern suburb of Bruce, but some of the...
and as member (1987–1989) and then Deputy Chairman (1989–1998) of the Australian Sports CommissionAustralian Sports CommissionThe Australian Sports Commission is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in Australia. It is an agency of the Government of Australia within the portfolio of Health and Ageing... - Senior Vice-President of the organising committee of the Sydney Olympic Games (SOCOG) from 1993 to 2000 and Chairman of SOCOG Sports Commission (1996–2000)
- council member of the International Rowing Federation (FISAInternational Rowing FederationThe Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Aviron, or FISA for short, is the International Rowing Federation which is the governing body for international Rowing. Its current president is Denis Oswald...
) since 1992 - Chairman of the Australian Olympic Foundation from 1996
- member (1994) and then Vice-President from 1995 of the Council of the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CASCAS' may refer to:-Institutions:* California Academy of Sciences, a museum of natural history, San Francisco, California, USA* Casualty Actuarial Society, a professional society of actuaries in the United States...
) - member International Olympic CommitteeInternational Olympic CommitteeThe International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...
(IOC) since 2001 and an elected member of the Executive Board from October 2009 - member of the following IOC Commissions: Juridical (2002-), Olympic Games Study (2002–2003), TV Rights and New Media (since 2005 ), Coordination for the Games of the XXX Olympiad, London 2012 (since 2005)
- member of Sydney Olympic Park AuthoritySydney Olympic ParkSydney Olympic Park is a suburb in western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Sydney Olympic Park is located 16 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Auburn Council....
since 2005 - director of Events New South Wales Pty Ltd, a company set up in December 2007 to attract "special events" to New South WalesNew South WalesNew South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
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Olympic bids
Coates was Vice President of the Sydney Olympic Bid Committee. He played a key role in bringing the 2000 Olympics to Australia and in its delivery.
In January 1999 John Coates released documents revealing that he, and other officials, had been involved in extensive vote buying in 1993 to secure the Olympic Games for Sydney. He admitted that the night before Sydney won the 2000 Games, he offered more than $A50,000 each to the national Olympic committees of Kenya and Uganda and provided their delegates with expensive hotel accommodation in London and other gifts. Coates also organised a place for the daughter of the Swaziland
Swaziland
Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...
IOC delegate at a Sydney tertiary education facility. African IOC delegates were also promised that sports training would be provided for African athletes at the Australian Institute for Sport in Canberra, if Sydney won.
In a frank admission of how IOC bidding worked, Coates told the press: Well, we didn't win it (the Games) on the beauty of the city and the sporting facilities we had to offer on their own, and we were never going to.
In an article published in Sydney's Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
The Daily Telegraph is an Australian tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, by Nationwide News, part of News Corporation.The Tele, as it is also known, was founded in 1879. From 1936 to 1972, it was owned by Frank Packer's Australian Consolidated Press. That year it was sold to...
on 27 January 1999, Coates said Australian officials had at first been "terribly naive" about the bidding process but soon "refined" their efforts. Based on the lessons of two failed Games bids (Brisbane and Melbourne), Coates produced a 16-page strategy document. With government support, the budget for securing IOC delegates' support was increased from $A6 million for the Brisbane bid to $A28 million for Sydney.
As he explained: Over the course of my involvement with three Australian Olympic bids, I watched this bidding process get out of hand. After a relatively benign process delivered the 1988 Games to Seoul, the 1992 bid took the process to a new level of professionalism and competition. That escalation continued for the 1996 and 2000 bids, with each successive bidder seeking an edge.
Controversy
In 1980 Coates was at the heart of the controversy as to whether Australia should boycott the Summer Games in Moscow. He was adamant that, as one of the two countries that had participated at every games, Australia's sporting bodies should not bow to political pressure to boycott, but rather should indeed send a team to Moscow.In the mid-1990s Coates together with Leo Wallner, then Austrian Olympic Committee
Austrian Olympic Committee
The Austrian Olympic Committee The Austrian Olympic Committee The Austrian Olympic Committee (Österreichisches Olympisches Comité (ÖOC in ) is the non-profit organization representing Austrian athletes in the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It was formally recognized by the IOC in 1912...
president and head of Casinos Austria
Casinos Austria
Casinos Austria, formed in 1967 and based in Austria, is a gaming corporation that owns and operates casinos around the globe. It is one of the largest casino operators in the world...
, joined with the Australian Olympic Committee's investment arm, under Coates' leadership, to invest in the establishment of a casino
Sofitel Reef Casino
The Sofitel Reef Casino or Reef Hotel Casino is the only casino in Cairns, Queensland. The hotel has 128 hotel rooms and is managed by Sofitel.-History:...
in Cairns
Cairns, Queensland
Cairns is a regional city in Far North Queensland, Australia, founded 1876. The city was named after William Wellington Cairns, then-current Governor of Queensland. It was formed to serve miners heading for the Hodgkinson River goldfield, but experienced a decline when an easier route was...
in north-east Australia. In 2007 Coates said We held onto our shares and sold them only last year. Our original investment was $7 million and we ended up losing $3.5 million.
In 1997 Coates and then NSW State Treasurer Michael Egan
Michael Egan (Australian politician)
Michael Rueben Egan , a former union official and former Australian politician, served as Treasurer of New South Wales between 1995 and 2005...
engaged in a dispute over an alleged conflict of interest arising from criticisms Coates had made in regard to accommodation taxes imposed by the government.
Coates and Sydney radio host Alan Jones
Alan Jones (radio broadcaster)
Alan Belford Jones AO is an Australian radio broadcaster, former rugby union and rugby league coach and administrator.Jones hosts Sydney's most popular breakfast radio program, on radio station 2GB...
have had a long standing feud that has occasionally ended in litigation. In April 2007 this litigation was concluded when Coates was awarded $360,000 damages when a jury found a broadcast made by Jones in December 2004 conveyed defamatory meanings.
In August 2007 during a broadcast from Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, Jones made comments, based on wire service reports, about an interview that Coates had given in which it was alleged that he (Coates) had made disparaging remarks about Beijing. Subsequently, in October 2007, Jones apologised to Coates on air for his comments.
Business career
Coates is currently chairman of William Inglis & Son Ltd, a bloodstock auction and financial services company; deputy chairman and non-executive director of David Jones LimitedDavid Jones Limited
David Jones Limited , colloquially known as DJs, is a high-end Australian department store chain.David Jones was founded in 1838 by David Jones, a Welsh immigrant, and is claimed to be the oldest continuously operating department store in the world still trading under its original name. It...
; and a partner in the Sydney law firm of Kemp Strang.
He is also director of the Australian subsidiaries of Grosvenor Group Limited
Grosvenor Group
Grosvenor is a privately owned property group with offices in 18 cities. It has four regional investment & development businesses in Britain & Ireland, the Americas, Australia and Asia Pacific; an international fund management business, which operates across these markets and in continental Europe;...
, a property development company privately owned by the Duke of Westminster
Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster
Major-General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, , is the son of Robert George Grosvenor, 5th Duke of Westminster, and his wife Hon. Viola Maud Lyttelton. He is the owner of property company Grosvenor Group...
, and a member of the advisory board of New Zealand property investment company Grant Samuel, the International Olympic Committee, and the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. He has previously served on the boards of several state and federal statutory bodies, charities and companies, including, from just after the 2000 Olympic Games, the Australian subsidiary of the public relations company Burson-Marsteller
Burson-Marsteller
Burson-Marsteller is a global public relations and communications firm headquartered in the United States. Burson-Marsteller operates 67 wholly owned offices and 71 affiliate offices in 98 countries across six continents...
.
Honours
Coates was made a Companion of the Order of AustraliaOrder of Australia
The Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
in June 2006 for service to the development of sport nationally and internationally through the Olympic movement, promoting the wellbeing of youth and values of tolerance, understanding, peace and mutual respect between peoples of the world. He had previously been awarded an OAM in 1989 in recognition of service to the sport of rowing and an AO in 1995 in recognition of service to the advancement of sport and the Olympic movement. In 2000 he was awarded an Australian Sports Medal
Australian Sports Medal
The Australian Sports Medal was an award given during 2000 to recognise achievements in Australian sport.Recipients of the award included competitors, coaches, sports scientists, office holders, and people who maintained sporting facilities and services. Over 18,000 Medals were...
for service to the Olympic movement.
In 1993 Coates was made a life member of Rowing Australia, an honour bestowed only on five others.
He is an honorary life member of Sydney Rowing Club.
In December 1993 he was inducted into the Sports Australia Hall of Fame.
In 2003 Coates became the fourth Australian to present the prizes at the conclusion of the annual Henley Regatta. Usually this honour is reserved for royalty, diplomats or a leading politician. He was the first person to present the Princess Grace Challenge Cup
Princess Grace Challenge Cup
The Princess Grace Challenge Cup is a rowing event for women's quadruple sculls at the annual Henley Royal Regatta on the River Thames at Henley-on-Thames in England. It is open to female crews from all eligible rowing clubs. Two or more clubs may combine to make an entry.The event is named after...
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In 2000 he was awarded the Olympic Order in Gold and the FISA Medal of Honour.