If Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates is re-elected on Saturday he will "push for new guidelines for future elections to prevent a repeat of the bloody power struggle Australia’s Olympic movement has endured for the past six weeks," according to Nicole Jeffery of THE AUSTRALIAN. Coates said that he was "unprepared for the bitterness of the campaign waged by his opponents and believed it had damaged the Olympic brand in Australia." He said that former Australian Sports Commission Chair Greg Hartung suggested that "guidelines for future candidates would help." Coates said, "Because of the indignity with which the campaign has been run, the AOC needs to come out with some guidelines for candidatures at elections and ... maybe provide an opportunity where you get the sports together and you can have some presentations and do it all in one go." Some sports leaders "expressed their dismay at the vitriol unleashed during the only contested presidential election the AOC has had in the 26 years that Coates has been in charge." Coates said that professional politicians said to him that this was "as nasty as a campaign gets" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 5/4). The AAP reported Coates said that the AOC's "strong financial position under his presidency could put the country in the frame to host another Games." He has "spruiked his efforts to establish Australia as a major Olympic political and financial player during his 27-year leadership." Coates: "We are welcome at the highest levels of international deliberations." But Danni Roche, the incumbent’s challenger at the AOC’s annual general meeting, "reiterated her platform of redirecting money to athletes." Roche: "When sports can't invest in their future, the risk of losing talented athletes to another sport, or to sport altogether, is real" (AAP, 5/2).
