BOA Cash Problems Escalate – Moynihan to Lose Chair if CAS Case Fails

March 24, 2011

The British Olympic Association’s (BOA) cash problems are set to prevent them from staging one of the Olympic Movement’s most important and high-profile meetings in London next year.


The General Assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), a bi-annual event, attended by more than 200 National Olympic Committees and held in conjunction with a meeting of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) ruling Executive Board, was set to be held by the BOA just three months before the start of the Games in London.

However, the BOA are now set to inform the ANOC that they cannot afford the US$8m estimated that it would cost to host the event. With Athens and Beijing both having held the Assembly in 2004 and 2008 respectively, just a few months before they staged the Olympics and Paralympics, London was the obvious choice, but the 2012 event is now likely to be held in Mexico instead.

A spokesman for the BOA told insidethegames: “The final decision regarding the location for the 2012 ANOC Executive Board Meeting and General Assembly rests with the leadership of ANOC.

“We are fully committed and pleased to be doing our part to support them.”

But the BOA’s failure to be able to organise the General Assembly is another setback for the political ambitions of its chairman, Colin Moynihan, whose ambitions of becoming an IOC member have been hit by the row between the BOA and London 2012 over the surplus from next year’s Olympics, which has been referred to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

After he rejected an offer from IOC President Jacques Rogge earlier this month to personally intervene and help broker a solution, Moynihan’s reputation is thought to have been marred within the body and reports suggest that his future at the BOA rests on the result of the case taken to the CAS.

The BOA is entitled to 20% of any surplus from the 2012 Games, however, there is disagreement over whether that should mean just the Olympics or also include the Paralympics.

Senior BOA National Olympic Committee members will table a no-confidence vote in Moynihan if the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rules against it.

The BOA filed papers with CAS two weeks ago over its dispute with the London 2012 organising committee (LOCOG) and the hearing is likely to take place within the next four months.

The BOA is challenging an International Olympic Committee ruling that it should not be able to take its share of any profit from the 2012 Games until the Paralympics have also been taken into account.

The BOA’s National Olympic Committee (NOC) contains representatives from all of the Olympic sports and is responsible for electing the organisation’s chairman and has concerns that the BOA is spending money which it cannot afford, on a case which it is likely to lose.

The leader of one sport’s governing body told the BBC: “There is no way that CAS is going to go along with this.

“Moynihan’s position will be untenable if he loses. We have got to get the timing of the no-confidence motion right, but he can’t possibly survive if he sustains that amount of collateral damage.”

Another added: “Members of the NOC will have to ask themselves how the BOA got to this when we should all have been concentrating on winning gold medals.”