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Defiant Coles meets with Gosper Under fire IOC member refuses to consider stepping down
Posted: Monday May 10, 1999 09:34 AM
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Senior International Olympic Committee official Kevan Gosper denied IOC boss Juan Antonio Samaranch sent him to fire embattled IOC member Phil Coles when the two Australians met Monday. Australian media speculated that Gosper carried a message from Samaranch into the meeting with Coles, the target of sustained calls to resign from the board of the 2000 Sydney Olympics organizing board SOCOG. Gosper, an IOC vice-president, said he briefed Coles on the investigations into his controversial dealings as an IOC member. "It would be quite unusual for me to come out here, an investigation having been set up, to tell Phil Coles what he should do and what he shouldn't do," Gosper told reporters after the meeting. "I certainly didn't arrive in Sydney with a message from Juan Antonio Samaranch advising Phil Coles to resign from either SOCOG or the IOC." Gosper said he rejected Coles' view that there was a conspiracy working against him and said Coles may be guilty of "the possibility of a continuous pattern of misjudgment." "I can't see any case for a conspiracy, I know of no persons, I know of no information that suggests there is a conspiracy against Phil Coles -- and I told him that," Gosper told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television Monday night. Australian Sports Minister Jackie Kelly added her voice to a chorus of Coles critics Monday, saying Coles had been urged by every "sportsman, sports coach, sportswoman and sports administrator to go." "His time has come," Kelly said. Coles has stepped aside from SOCOG pending the IOC investigations but says he expects to be cleared and to return to the board. Kelly's call for Coles' resignation follows months of pressure from SOCOG president Michael Knight and a similar call last week by chief executive Sandy Hollway. Coles, however, remains defiant. "My position has not changed," Coles said Monday. "I have to appear before the [IOC] and Mr. Gosper has no role to play in that. The [IOC] meeting will take place and I'll present my case and I'll be cleared." Coles, speaking in a pay television interview recorded before Monday's meeting but aired after it, said he was upset with the "hurtful vilification of me and those around me." "You lay awake at night thinking what have I done to deserve this. All I wanted to do was bring the Games back to Australia. We finally got the Games here and I sometimes wonder if it was all worth it." Coles said if he had his time over "I don't think I'd ever go and try to bid to win the Games again." "It's a sad reflection but living through this experience and the accusatins and controversies and jealousies, I don't think that's worth it." The IOC announced last week it had deferred until June a decision on an investigation into whether Coles accepted expensive jewelry from a businessman associated with Athens' failed 1996 bid. The IOC earlier had reprimanded Coles for accepting excessive hospitality and travel from the successful 2002 Salt Lake City bid team and warned him any further indiscretion would result in expulsion. Coles sits on the SOCOG board because he is an Australian IOC member along with Gosper. But he stepped aside in March when the Salt Lake City hospitality allegations were first aired. Last week, it was revealed that 400 pages of documents containing his own candid assessments of IOC voting members were passed on to the Salt Lake City bid team. Coles has denied giving the documents to Salt Lake City.
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