Interview Sam Coffa (Part 2): “I am good at convincing people, I can be quite persuasive”
In the second part (out of three) of this exclusive interview, Sam Coffa recalls the end of his competitive career and his entry into politics, having served as Mayor of Hawthorn on two occasions. Not many will know that the chair of the IWF Technical Committee was also a dedicated soccer referee for 18 years and that he was “disqualified” from the Australian Weightlifting Federation for almost a decade. When he was rehabilitated, Coffa became the President of the national body for 25 years, and made also his entry into the IWF sphere. One of his first and most important assignments was the leadership of the Women’s Commission, a role that he particularly cherished. His decisive contribution was pivotal for the entry of the women’s events in the Olympic programme, in 2000 in Sydney. So your athletic career finished soon after the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo...I just competed until 1970 and also became a national coach. In that same year, I took the Australian team as manager coach to the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. We were quite successful there and we brought four gold medals. At the same time, I was also the Technical Coordinator of the Australian Weightlifting Federation and Treasurer of the Victorian Weightlifting Association. But my passion was the technical side of it. Still today, you are a world reference on weightlifting’s technical side… That's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a good referee and very quickly I became a Category Two referee. But in Edinburgh, I convinced the then General Secretary of the International Federation, Oscar State, if he could give me the opportunity to be examined for Category One, as we had only three Category One referees in Australia. One was blind of one eye, one had one eye missing, and the other one used to fall asleep, so instead of six eyes you only had two eyes… Given the situation, he was very nice to me and he took me under his wing. I refereed three sessions at those Commonwealth Games, they examined me and I got 98 percent, so I was pretty good – that’s how I got my Category One status. I said, ‘This is my future’, but soon after that things got complicated. Why?You might not know this but I was disqualified by the Australian Federation for 10 years. The president at the time was a self-made millionaire and he saw me as a potential leader. In order to get rid of me, they conjured up a couple of reasons why I didn't do this, why I didn't do that at the Commonwealth Games. To make a long story short, they accused me of not liaising in Scotland with the person they had indicated – I didn’t even know what ‘liaison’ meant… Another reason was that the Federation was pushing for one of our athletes – Nick Ciancio – to move one category up in order to beat Louis Martin, an English guy, originally from Jamaica. I didn’t do that and Ciancio eventually won a gold medal in his category, the Light Heavyweight. I was always a strategist man and I preferred to get the gold than to potentially lose to Martin, who was a world champion. When I arrived in Australia and I presented my report they kept me asking why I hadn’t strictly followed their rules. And I said, 'Listen, when I left Australia it was to win gold medals. He won the gold medal. What more do you want?’ He said, ‘When you leave the country and you have a team, you have to abide by the rules.' It was simply to get rid of me. And they got rid of me. How did you deal with this situation?Despite the sanction, they didn't disqualify me. So, every year, you are supposed to renew your membership by paying a fee. And I continued doing so – every year, I used to send a bank check of four pounds with my nomination. They would come back, each time, and say, ‘We regret to inform that your membership has not been accepted.’ They would never indicate a reason, so there was nothing I could do. They did this for nine years, and back then you could not appeal, there was no court of arbitration… In a way, you were out of the sport…Yes, and because I was out of the sport, I became involved in local politics… …you were Mayor of Hawthorn on two occasions, right?I had a political election and I won, and I stayed on the council for 14 years. And also to keep fit, I started to follow my son's soccer team. And I became a football referee for 18 years. Australian football?No, no, soccer. And it was good for my son. But then it became like a profession, because I used to get good money. Not many people know about this. I had a family of four children, and if it hadn't been for the football, I don't know how I could have managed. Sometimes you had a midweek football match, and then on Saturday - two in the morning, and a major one in the afternoon -, and then Sunday, two junior matches again. So I had to keep fit, and I did this for 18 years! As the Mayor of Hawthorn, with his daughter Coming back to your mandates in the city council…Under my leadership, as Mayor, we built a recreation centre, a big one, with a weightlifting dedicated facility. When it came the inauguration day, I officially invited a couple of big names in the sport, including Australian star Robert Kabbas [he would win, in 1984, a silver medal at the Olympics] and the German Olympic and world champion Rolf Milser. But I couldn’t invite him officially without going through the President of the Australian Weightlifting Federation. So I went to meet him and told him what I wanted to do. I was also giving £1,000 pounds in those days for a world record, free accommodation for them, and some sponsorship. It was a very exciting event. Came the competition and the only thing that happened was that Kabbas injured himself, so we replaced him. Also, the German guy could not improve the world record, but at the end of it the President of Australian Weightlifting came to me and said, 'Oh, by the way, about your membership for next year, put it in and it should be all right.' Did he keep his promise?Yes, but it was the worst thing he could have done! Because one year later, they kicked him out as President and I became the President. And that's how my ‘second’ weightlifting career began. We were in 1979. By then, I had built a career, let’s say, as a top person: I was a politician, but also a businessman. When I arrived at the presidency, I understood the Federation owed about $72,000 under this leader who was himself a self-made millionaire. That’s why they thought, 'No, we can't have this.' So they made a coup, and I became the President. I was in the lead for 25 years… …until 2005? But now [May 2025] you are again the President.Yes, they called me back. Again, because they were broken and because I was supported by my brother Paul, who by that time had become a promotional and financial guru. How did your political experience help in your sports career as an administrator?I think I was good at convincing other people when I was on the council. We were 12 people there. I know to be persuasive, and for that you have to debate, and debate well. I also learned very quickly about the older councillors, how they used to operate. And I understood, for instance, that there is no logic in losing. I mean, in the end you need to have votes. From a strategic point of view, you only got one chance to speak to the council and I decided as a general rule that I would speak towards the end of it, when everybody is tired. When I knew I would lose the argument, I would propose a postponement (that was normally accepted), and then prepare another ‘assault’ for the upcoming meeting. That's how I got the recreation centre built because there was no consensus and no appetite for it. But, with perseverance, I just wanted them to believe it was good for the community, it was good for sport, it was good for health. So, yes, I learnt that ability to discuss and debate, and that's how I became involved in weightlifting. And how did you get involved with the IWF?After I became President of the national federation, the first meeting I attended was in 1998 in Jakarta. We had the World Senior Championships there for women, but at the same time there was an electoral congress. I was proposed to be a candidate for the technical committee, and I thought, 'Yeah, I think I would like that.' I was elected, and no matter what I brought up, changes that I had in mind that we could do and so on, there were always voices saying, ‘We don't want to do this, we don't want to do that.’ And I quickly became very disillusioned. I wanted to achieve things, not just sitting in meetings and listening to people with no vision. My intention was to leave after four years, but much to my surprise, at the next Congress, I nominated for VP and Executive Board and became a vice-president. I came in and I could then start to make a mark. My first appointment was to be the chairman of the Women's Commission. And during that time we did a lot of work. And I think people saw that I was working and that I got up there and spoke. I mean, I wasn't that good, but I was good enough. Receiving the Life Membership of the Commonwealth Games Australia Were you always convinced, even before that nomination, that women had a place in weightlifting?Oh yes! To bring you back to when I joined the club in Australia, it was a boys' club. Girls were not allowed in. And it was me who convinced the council to change our constitution to allow girls to come in and we became the Hawthorn Citizens Youth Club, not only the Boys Club. I had the privilege of serving as general secretary of the club when the first woman president was elected, so I've been on the avant-garde about women in weightlifting. I couldn't see why the women couldn't practice our sport. I worked hard for that recognition and I was partly responsible for the Olympic Games qualification system when the IOC decided on the inclusion of women in the programme of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. But they only wanted to give us three categories for them. As I thought this was not right, I convinced the Executive Board to then change the categories. So we eventually reduced the men's categories in order to make room for more women. And I remember writing an article saying 'When less means more'. It was the right thing to do. I still think that's one of the best things I've worked on. Which other highlights would you recall?The financial part. IWF’s financial statements were just taking one A4 page – half income, half expenses. I was then saying to the Board, ‘In my youth club, I'm the general secretary and I know that the financial statements of this club, which is a small club, has five pages and two pages of audit. Here, we don't even have an audit…’ After this, they worked very hard to get rid of me. I grew up on them. I think they could see that I could be useful, and by the time the Sydney Olympics came around, I was ready to take over the technical committee. I was ready to challenge anyone because I had made an impression on the world. That’s when I became First Vice-President for a couple of terms. And the Chairman of the Technical Committee. Was it special for you that women entered the Olympic programme in Australia?I think it was inevitable and it was the right time to strike. The world was ready for the movement: we were having World Championships open to women since 1987, so when this happened, of course I was very happy. We achieved what we wanted to achieve, a gender equal sport, which is important. Do you still think the IWF is conservative?I don't know if the people sitting around the table know exactly what the word 'conservative' means. Really, I don't. I'm not sure If we can call it ‘conservatism’. I think we need to think from a practical point of view. If you don’t think like that, we would have been out of the Olympic Games, and if we had been out of the Olympic Games, we would have ceased to exist for sure. Moreover, we need to work by joining our forces. We did that during our most recent turbulent times and it saved us. There was a real possibility that we could have been finished but unity of purpose by the Executive Board under the strong and decisive leadership of Mohammed Jalood, saved the day. By Pedro AdregaIWF Communications Part 1 of Sam Coffa’s interview can be found here. As part of the 120 daily posts published for the IWF’s 120th anniversary, Sam Coffa was portrayed on May 17, 2025
