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Noted sports administrator Phil Coles, who played a key role in leading an Australian team to the 1980 Moscow Olympics and then securing the 2000 Games for his hometown of Sydney, has died. He was 91.
Coles will also be remembered as one of the 24 International Olympic Committee (IOC) members implicated in the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics bid bribery scandal.
He was officially reprimanded for receiving ‘splendid hospitality’ from Salt Lake officials in exchange for information, and lost his position on the Sydney Games organizing committee as a result.
Coles (pictured carrying the flame before the 2000 Olympics) played a huge role in ensuring that his hometown of Sydney hosted the Games.
The administrator did not back down when the federal government tried to pressure the Australian Olympic Committee to get athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow games over Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.
He acknowledged that the affair left a lasting stain on his reputation.
“I’d still like to see my name cleared,” Coles said later.
“I have all the evidence, but I’ll let it slide… I have loads of evidence, but to do it (reopen the case) I have to open a hornet’s nest and I don’t.” I don’t want to harm the Olympic movement.
After representing Australia as a canoeist at the 1960, 1964 and 1968 Olympics, Coles turned to sports administration.
In 1980, the federal government headed by Malcolm Fraser pressured the Australian Olympic Federation to support a US-led boycott of the Moscow Games in retaliation for the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Coles was among those who stood their ground, ensuring Australia would continue their proud record of competing in every Summer Olympics.
Coles (pictured second from right with legendary Australian Olympian Dawn Fraser, center) also represented his country in canoeing at the 1960, ’64 and ’68 Games.
“Phil Coles was a man who always cared about athletes in all his different roles,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement on Saturday.
‘His interests were always on his mind and in his heart.
“He was instrumental in getting an Australian Olympic team into the 1980 Moscow Olympics against all boycott requests.
“It made him proud for the rest of his life to have brought these athletes to the Olympic Stadium.
“His love for the Olympic Games was at the center of his life.”
After unsuccessful bids from Brisbane for the 1992 Olympics and Melbourne for 1996, Coles played a central role in persuading fellow IOC members to narrowly pick Sydney over favored Beijing as the 2000 host city. .
The Sydney Olympics were widely regarded as one of the greatest ever hosted, although Coles was mostly sidelined at the time of the Games, his reputation taking a hit over the Salt Lake affair.
“It was hard work,” Coles told News Corp in 2012 of the bidding process.
‘More than 60 per cent of the IOC members had never been to Australia at the time and if we hadn’t been able to bring those people to Sydney we wouldn’t have won those Games.
“That was our ace up the hole, being able to show delegates how beautiful Sydney is.”
Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) Chairman Ian Chesterman joined in tributes to Coles, who died on Saturday, as a man whose “service to Australian sport was immense”.
Australian Olympic Committee Chairman Ian Chesterman said Coles’ passing marked a “sad day for the Olympic movement”.
“Phil’s passing, after a lifetime in sport, is a sad day for the Olympic movement and many involved in the broader Australian sporting community,” Chesterman said in a statement.
‘I was particularly pleased to see Phil at the Tokyo Olympics in the canoeing events; an opportunity for him to return to one of the host cities of his three Olympic Games as an athlete, and that was obviously very important to him.
“He very much enjoyed the opportunity to see the current competitors, as the athletes are the center of their long service to the Olympic movement.”
Coles was a member of the IOC from 1982 to 2011.
He joined the AOC executive board in 1973 and was a founding board member of the Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC).
He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 1983 Queen’s Birthday Honors ‘for service to sport’ and was inducted into the Australian Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.