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John Coates has been re-elected as the president of the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC).
Coates won 58 votes to 35 against hockey gold medallist Danni Roche at the AOC's annual general meeting in Sydney.
Not just business as usual
Nothing will really ever be the same again for the Australian Olympic Committee. John Coates won this challenge to his leadership but look at those votes — 58-35.A third of the voters in the room wanted him out and that underlines the rift that has emerged in this campaign between two camps, the rift that has gone through the sport and the athletes themselves.
He now says it is business as usual but he will need to heal that rift when he goes into his next and, as he has said, final term.
What was not known was how these votes were laid out. That will emerge, no doubt, in the next coming days.
Danni Roche denied it, but it was always said and assumed that the smaller sports — the ones who really owed Mr Coates the most in terms of pushing their agenda, the ones that really only exist every four years financially with the Olympics — would be the ones who would be the most loyal to Mr Coates.
There is no doubt he has the confidence of a majority of sports, but there is also no doubt that bad blood has emerged over the past six weeks.
There will need to be questions asked about how they have done business.
Mr Coates has signalled he will need to change the way he makes decisions.
- National sport correspondent Mary Gearin
It was the first time the sports administrator had faced a challenge to his position in 27 years.
There was loud applause as the result was announced and afterwards Mr Coates briefly thanked members for their support.
"Thank you very much for the confidence you've shown in me," he said.
Mr Coates is expected to address the media later today.
The AOC members also voted on the two vice-president positions, electing Coates allies Ian Chesterman and Helen Brownlee ahead of Roche supporter Andrew Plympton.
Roche responded to the vote by congratulating Coates on his win.
The vote ends a bitter campaign for the presidency, which raised allegations of bullying against Coates' media right-hand man, Mike Tancred.
Tancred stepped down from his role as AOC media director last month pending an independent committee investigation of allegations of bullying made by former AOC chief executive Fiona de Jong.
The overall tenor of the campaign centred around the sporting administrative experience of Coates, who is also a vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, versus the argument that after 27 years it was time for a change.
Roche raised Coates' substantial salary as president, saying she wanted the payment — reportedly $700,000 a year — drastically reduced as part of a 30 per cent savings proposal so more money could re-directed into funding for athletes in the build-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Tensions between AOC and ASC exposed
The other element to the campaign was the underlying tensions between two of Australia's top sporting bodies, the AOC and the Australian Sports Commission (ASC).
A public argument between Coates and ASC chair John Wylie at this year's Nitro Athletics meet in Melbourne exposed the deterioration in relations.
Coates accused Wylie of working against him, trying to unseat him from his long-held position.
During the AOC election campaign, Roche — who is an ASC commissioner — has denied she was a puppet candidate and said her decision to run was "100 per cent" her choice.
Topics: sport, olympics-summer, sydney-2000, nsw, australia
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