‘Tyranny of cash’: Australian vows to clean up weightlifting
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Legendary Australian sports administrator Sam Coffa has pledged to help try and restore the reputation of weightlifting after a devastating report revealed widespread cover-ups of doping and vote buying within the troubled Olympic sport.
The findings of an investigation by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren into the seedy underbelly of the lifting game were dropped on Friday morning Australian time in Toronto, with the stench of corruption its major theme.
Thailand's Siripuch Gulnoi confessed to taking drugs to win bronze at the London Olympics.Credit:Getty Images
McLaren, the man behind the two-part report on Russia’s state-sponsored doping four years ago, uncovered 40 positive drug tests that were hidden in the records of the International Weightlifting Federation, including those of gold and silver medallists. He also found there had been rampant vote-buying at elections and that there was $US10 million missing, and slammed the sport’s long-time former president, the Hungarian Tamas Ajan, for authoritarian leadership operated by the “tyranny of cash”.
None of this was an enormous surprise to Coffa, the 84-year-old president of the Australian Weightlifting Federation who was an IWF vice-president for 25 years and who was in the last fortnight brought on by the global governing body’s board as an official advisor.
AdvertisementCoffa, the long-timer former Commonwealth Games Australia president, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he was one of the more than 50 witnesses interviewed by McLaren, who said only four of 20 member federations contacted had replied to his investigators and “only one of those provided information of significant value”.
The 122-page report details a vote-rorting scheme at the IWF election in Bangkok in 2017, when Coffa lost his place on the executive after supporting the opposition ticket. Ajan, now 81, retained the presidency with the support of certain African and Asian federations who were originally standing against him. The bribes ranged from $US5000 to $US30,000.
Sam Coffa has been involved in weightlifting and Olympic sport for more than 60 years.Credit:Steve Christo
While Coffa flew direct to Thailand for the vote, the bribed delegates travelled via Qatar and stayed at five-star hotels, all expenses paid, and lavished with luxury cruises.
“They were then transported by Thailand ... all free of charge, they were put in a separate hotel then the one where we were all staying,” Coffa said on Friday.
“Then on the morning of the election they presented themselves at the congress, they were instructed to vote according to a ticket. They were then requested to photograph that ballot, present the ballot to a person and that person would give them $5000. We would say in our country, ‘That’s bribery, that’s corruption’.”
Coffa was from 2000 to 2008 effectively second in command to Ajan as IWF first vice-president and said he had for years tried to drive change and heard rumours of the skulduggery in the sport.
“This is what people like me have been suspecting for a long time,” he said.
Long-time former IWF president Tamas Ajan.Credit:Getty Images
“In my time there, the board and the sport was dominated by eastern Europeans. It was difficult – I was the only dissenting voice, it didn’t matter what I said or thought or did. They just had a set of values and that’s what they did. But you need votes. If you don’t have votes you don’t have anything.
“Tamas Ajan was a master of divide and conquer. He knew where the votes were and he made sure he had the support at all times.
“It didn’t matter whether you were an executive board member or first vice-president, he just wouldn’t listen to you.”
Super heavyweight Rustam Djangabaev of Uzbekistan was banned for doping last year. Credit:Getty Images
As for doping, its entrenchment in weightlifting is not exactly breaking news – as McLaren’s report notes, more than 600 lifters have tested positive over the past decade. Thailand and Malaysia were banned from having weightlifters at the Tokyo Olympics altogether because so many of their athletes had failed drugs tests.
The revelations in the report about a history of drug tests being covered up, however, is another blow for clean athletes.
Richard McLaren previously wrote twin reports about Russian doping.Credit:AP
“You always had those assumptions and you talked amongst other people involved in the sport who had those assumptions,” said former Queensland super heavyweight Damon Kelly, who finished ninth at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and won gold at the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010.
“It’s sad to see that it’s confirmed. But it’s not that surprising.”
Coffa, meanwhile, sat up late on Thursday night in his Melbourne home to watch McLaren deliver his findings in a video press conference.
A doorkeeper the 1956 Melbourne Olympics who himself lifted at the Tokyo Games in 1964 before spending decades in administration, his final assignment after more than 60 years may be to try and save the sport he loves.
“I’m an old man and I don’t have any aspirations but I just want to help the sport get up off its knees and come up as a powerful sport clean and well led,” he said.
“I hope I can make a contribution to the restoration of the sport worldwide. I’ll work as hard as I can until I die because it’s my passion.”
License this articleChris Barrett
Chris Barrett is Chief Sports Reporter of The Sydney Morning Herald.
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