Everyone keeps saying there are big shoes to fill with the retirement of Olympics chief John Coates. They are, but Mark Stockwell has Size 13 feet.

Before lunchtime on Saturday, there will be a new President of the Australian Olympic Committee for the first time since 1990.
Stockwell is seeking to win the vote as the fresh breeze of strong leadership for one of the most important decades of Australia’s Olympic history.

The 58-year-old is a well-known face around Queensland for his exploits in the pool as a swimmer, sports leadership roles and as managing director of a major property group.

There is an unprecedented 10-year runway to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. The imperative to maximise this one-off opportunity can’t be emphasised enough, says Stockwell.

The Mean Machine featured Australia’s Mike Delaney, Greg Fasala, Mark Stockwell and Neil Brooks at the 1984 LA Olympics. (File image)

Stockwell is filling his dance card with big ideas already… a participation revolution amongst Olympic sports with flagging numbers, reimagining high-performance and funding models and using the Olympics to bring the country closer together in the reconciliation process with our First Nations people.

It is a race in two for the vacant top job. Up against Stockwell is Ian Chesterman, a two-decade servant on the AOC Executive and Chef de Mission of last year’s successful Tokyo Olympics team.

The Tasmanian has been an able deputy to Coates and the head of Australia’s delegation at six Olympic Winter Games.

One of the Stockwell platforms is “genuine renewal.” He finds it hard to believe there will be a shake-up of ideas for more funding and improved high-performance if everything stays pretty much the same at the top.

Should he win a majority from the 93 votes cast, Stockwell wants a National Olympic Summit within six months.
“I get asked straight away if I mean a sports summit. It’s far bigger than that,” he said.

“If you back Olympic sports to create more active and more productive communities, you reduce the health budget. You improve educational outcomes with what sport drives with cognitive development and concentration in classrooms.

“This is a whole-of-Government opportunity for a healthier, more inclusive, longer living and more peaceful Australia. You want Ministers across different portfolios and the Prime Minister involved.

“Every dollar spent on sport returns $7 of total benefits for the country which is a powerful equation.”

Stockwell led the bid to win the 2018 Commonwealth Games for the Gold Coast and was Mayor of the Games Village.
There were legacy letdowns that can’t be repeated for 2032. He pointed to the ripping up of the athletics training track on the Gold Coast.

“It had been tagged for training into the future and for use by our Pacific island neighbours yet it was pulled up because there was no maintenance agreement. That’s what I mean by ad hoc,” Stockwell said.

“There are going to be major infrastructure projects for sport but they have to go up the right way. If we build a new skateboard park, let’s make it Olympic standard. You can’t have a new pool not suitable for water polo. The AOC should be custodian of all that technical data for consultation with Government.

“It doesn’t cost any more money. Just doing it right means local clubs will have access to facilities where Olympic dreams can keep happening.”

Coates outlasted seven Prime Ministers during his 32-year reign as Olympics supremo. Madonna was still high in the music charts when he came to power in 1990. No one tweeted the outcome because iPhones were still more than a decade away.

There is an intriguing footnote to this vote. No Queenslander has been AOC President since the position was born under a different name more than a century ago in 1920.

This will be Australia’s Olympics but Stockwell has a very Queensland story to tell on how the Olympic flame came to burn so brightly in his life.

He wasn’t the fastest swimmer rising through St Laurence’s College and only became swimming captain after two peers left the school.

He thought he should do something extra for that role entering Year 12 and bumped into the elite coach that changed his life at his local pool at Bellbowrie.

Stockwell was a tall, lean stripling. He trained, competed and earned a scholarship to the Australian Institute of Sport where he was introduced to sports science, diet and sports psychology.

He was tuned into one of the world’s best 100m freestylers. He won two silver medals and a bronze at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and renown with his shaved-head as a member of the “Mean Machine” relay team.

He met his wife-to-be Tracy Caulkins in the Games Village in Los Angeles. She won three gold medals in the pool as one of the greatest swimmers of her generation.

They now have five children. “At the time, you don’t realise it but you get some of the great lessons for life, business and family from the accelerated learning you get in sport,” Stockwell said.

Tracy is a high achiever in her own right. The new President of Swimming Australia is a board member of the Brisbane 2032 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (BOCOG).

Stockwell has been down the pathway of Talent ID, the value of the right coach and high-performance backing to know what can be improved.

“Before all that came the sheer enjoyment of sport fostered by my Dad always having his kids involved in everything from rugby and basketball to swimming and riding horses,” Stockwell said.

“We need to ignite that joy in a participation revolution for our youth in the Olympic sports, not become a nation of watchers.
“I’m a parent, I’ve been an athlete and I know the importance of having the right support in the system.

“All of our Olympic sports should have a base level of funding to run their administration. Each sport has an expertise with their own networks and coaches. Come up with improved participation programs and we’ll fund them.”

He has made trips across the country over the past six months to talk personally to Presidents, Chairs and board members of Olympic sports. It highlighted to him how much know-how and how many big-hitters were already out there to implement such programs.

Stockwell would triple the number of high-performance coaches in Olympic sports and raise to 40 per cent the number of female coaches.

He is comfortable with leadership and listening and wants to.
“All the things I’ve done in sport and business have led me to this point,” Stockwell said.

The 2032 Brisbane Olympics are in his home city and he is on the pulse already.

Jim Tucker has specialised in sport, the wider impacts and features for most of his 40 years writing in the media. He covered the Olympics in Seoul (1988), Sydney (2000) and London (2012) and took Lionel Ritchie’s advice after he singing along to “All Night Long” at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Closing Ceremony.