Sydney committee in disarray

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates has dismissed suggestions that political bickering is threatening the 2000 Sydney Games following the departure of a fourth senior member of the organising committee in two years.

Last Tuesday, Rod McGeoch, a 52-year-old Sydney lawyer who fronted the bid campaign, walked out of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) because, he said, he was the victim of muckraking by SOCOG president Michael Knight.

Knight, the New South Wales State Olympics minister, is seen as a political opponent in the build-up to the state elections in March when Knight's Labor Party might lose to the Liberals, with whom McGeoch is closely associated.

Yesterday, Coates said that even before Sydney won the Games in September, 1993, McGeoch had been written off as a potential chief executive.

"He was one of 15 board members. I don't see how that affects the Games," Coates said.

McGeoch denied claims he was making money from speaking fees and from advising Athens on their successful bid for the 2004 Olympics, and had a conflict of interest over his consultancy work for an insurance company.

In 1996, Gary Pemberton quit as SOCOG's first president when his attempt to run it like a business caused too much grief.

His successor, John Iliffe, who died of cancer last year, resigned after six months.

SOCOG's chief executive, Mal Hemmerling, was forced out after a row with Knight in 1997.