UK Athletics calls on West Ham to waive stadium rights to save Anniversary Games
Joanna Coates, new CEO of crisis-hit UK Athletics, tells Ben Bloom she is ready to make sweeping changes
UK Athletics is calling on West Ham to waive their tenancy rights for the London Stadium amid “major concerns” of a financial shortfall if the Anniversary Games cannot take place this summer due to Premier League football.
West Ham have primary use of the stadium as principal tenant throughout the football season, with UKA taking over for periods of each summer. However, the Anniversary Games – UKA’s most lucrative, flagship event – are in serious jeopardy this year even if the coronavirus pandemic subsides to the extent that sport has resumed by its scheduled date of July 4 and 5.
With Premier League football almost certain to continue far beyond its original end date in mid-May, the two sports look set to collide for use of the facility, with athletics destined to lose out.
The London Stadium concession agreement states that “all competitive [football] matches shall… take precedence over any other activity, event or use of the stadium”.
It also says that if the regular football season is moved and conflicts with the period of athletics use, “the Granter shall use its reasonable endeavours to agree with UKA to amend the dates of the athletics window to avoid the conflict… if the conflict cannot be avoided the Granter shall use its reasonable endeavours to provide the stadium in football mode”.
Joanna Coates, who started as UKA chief executive last week, told The Sunday Telegraph that the governing body was exploring the wording of the agreement but that it may come down to asking West Ham – who have declined to comment – “to be reasonable”.
She said: “In these unprecedented times, why is it football that always comes out – with all the money that slushes around in football – as the one that doesn’t suffer? It just doesn’t seem right to me.
“We’ve got athletes that have trained for an Olympic Games that they can’t now go to and we’re trying our best to make sure that they still have some form of competition. If it’s not safe for them then that’s fine. But it doesn’t seem wholly fair that football can have carte blanche – because of the money involved and broadcast deals – and push every sport out.”
Coates admitted it would be a major financial blow if the Anniversary Games were not able to go ahead and UKA may try to seek compensation. “Financially, it would be hard” she said. “We don’t want to cancel and are not cancelling yet. We’d like to think that football, with all its money, if we cannot have one of our major commercial events that produces a lot of revenue for us, it would be nice to think there might be some compensation there.”
Although Coates said there were no plans for UKA staff to take a pay cut, she conceded the sport would be hit financially by the pandemic, saying cancelling events and losing broadcast opportunities were “a major concern”.
On her first day in what she believes is “the toughest role in British sport”, Joanna Coates, UK Athletics’ new chief executive, held a board meeting to introduce herself at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium. The few people who did turn up spread themselves far and wide across the room, conscious not to sit too close to each other under coronavirus social-distancing measures. No introductory handshakes were allowed.
Within two days of that initial meeting on March 18, Coates had shut the office and sent the workforce home in the first major decision of her tenure. Four days later, the Olympics and Paralympics were postponed. It was, Coates admits with no small understatement, a “very unusual” first week. “It has tested me, but I’m still smiling,” she says.
Positivity is never in short supply with Coates (right), who has adopted her married name after previously operating as Joanna Adams. She is aware how crucial it will be; to suggest UKA is in turmoil is like describing the coronavirus as an inconvenience. Remembering each crisis of recent years is in itself an achievement with the number of reviews launched serving as a measure.
The most important is being conducted by UK Sport – the arbiter in all funding matters – while UKA recently published the results of its own independent review into the botched handling of Mo Farah’s disgraced coach Alberto Salazar, a topic that prompted performance director Neil Black to leave his job late last year.
That departure added to a conveyor belt of senior figures in recent years, with three chairmen and three chief executives coming and going in quick succession. In Zara Hyde Peters’ case it was so quick that she never actually made it into her chief executive role amid claims she failed to tell her local athletics club about allegations regarding her husband’s “inappropriate relationship” with a 15-year-old girl. That prompted yet another review.
There were also significant financial losses from the organisation’s illconceived hosting of the Athletics World Cup, while only last week it emerged that Scottish Athletics had formally told UK Sport that UKA had lost the trust of the “whole athletics community”.
Even without the tribulations of a national lockdown and an Olympic cancellation in her first week, one might wonder why Coates has taken on the role. Having successfully guided England Netball to national renown as the governing body’s chief executive and seemingly stepped into the quiet life with a job looking after London 2012 legacy, why has she now taken on such a challenge?
The answer, repeated more than once during her first interview since taking the job, is simple. “I love a challenge,” she says, speaking from her Nottinghamshire home where she has been meeting the majority of a disillusioned workforce remotely.
“When I got the call, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to have a go at this. It’s a sport that is out of shape. It needs a lot of sorting and I just desperately wanted the opportunity to do that. Through my whole career I’ve gone in and changed things. This needs a huge amount of change, probably across the entire business. I’m not good at easy jobs.
“I missed the pressure of running a sport and the pressure of having to deliver. The opportunity to change a sport and make people proud of it again is something I couldn’t resist.”
They are rousing words for a sport at the receiving end of regular kickings in recent years and for UKA staff, whose morale has sunk to an all-time low. But Coates knows proof she means what she says will be in her actions. No sugar-coating: wholesale changes are coming.
She relishes the UK Sport review – launched after “major concerns” emerged about the governing body’s ability to oversee athletics.
“It’s the right thing hing to do; it gives us a great platform to make some of this change because it gives you extra gravitas. It’s a great thing for a CEO to have.”
Coates also insists the leadership turntable has now come to a halt. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says, before revealing she will spend the next few months attempting to convince the “absolutely exceptional” interim chairman, Nic Coward, to remain in the role beyond his tenure to the end of this year.
Of the scathing words in that Scottish Athletics letter, she insists conversations during her short time in charge do not reflect those concerns. She admits “there definitely is an issue around trust”, but says one of her top priorities is to work with – rather than separately from – the individual governing bodies in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland to create “a collective strategy for this sport owned by all”.
The likely year-long Olympic delay is something she insists is “a phenomenal opportunity” for a sport in crisis to take time to put robust plans in place. To that end, Coates intends to speak to current and former athletes, coaches and anyone else involved in the sport. “I want them to tell me the good, the bad and the ugly,” she says. On her plans for interim performance perfo director Steve Paulding, whose contract was due to end after Tokyo 2020, and head of endurance Barry Fudge, who has been heavily implicated in the Salazar episode, Coates says she does not want to answer questions on specific individuals in the performance team “because I haven’t had the chance to even sit down and have a conversation with them”.
But her message rings strong: “The board has given me the remit to make changes to ensure this organisation gets back to where it should be. What that team looks like that drives it forward, let’s see. There will be major change in the organisation, and that doesn’t just mean people. That means policy, procedures, how we liaise with other organisations.”
England’s Commonwealth Games netball triumph in 2018 may have thrust Coates into the limelight, but the scrutiny will be significantly greater in her new role – which she was made aware of when news of her appointment was leaked to the media before she had even told her children. “I’m hopeful that I’m robust enough,” she says.
As for her vision for the sport, the one word that repeatedly crops up is “proud”. At the forefront of her ambitions – far more than Dina Asher-Smith or Katarina Johnson-Thompson winning Olympic gold – is a desire to restore pride in the governing body; pride in its athletes; and pride in athletics in Britain.
“I wrote a list of what I wanted to achieve in the sport before I started and the big one at the top was that perception had changed. I do not want medals at all costs. I hope that Dina wins. I believe she will and we want her to. But it’s about her story, her journey in athletics and what athletics can bring to anybody who participates. That’s what it should be about.”