John Dowling Coates AC (born 7 May 1950) is an Australian lawyer, sports administrator and businessman.

[10] Failing to matriculate at his first attempt at the NSW Higher School Certificate in 1967,[11] Coates repeated Year 12 in 1968 with better results.

[14] In October 2017, after a three-year engagement, Coates married the Timor-Leste born Orieta Pires, a hair and make-up artist.

Under the program the visiting teams received all meals, accommodation, training facilities, local transport, and access to sports medicine experts.

In total, the Program provided $2 million to support the development of African athletes and coaches who participated in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

In an article published in Sydney's Daily Telegraph on 27 January 1999, Coates said Australian officials had at first been "terribly naive" about the bidding process but soon "refined" their efforts.

Based on the lessons of two failed Games bids (Brisbane and Melbourne), Coates produced a 16-page strategy document.

[24] Prior to the Sydney Olympics, Coates had allegedly paid $35,000 inducements to both of the two African members of the IOC, Major-General Francis Nyangweso of Uganda and Charles Mukora of Kenya in 1993.

He was adamant that, as one of the five countries that had participated at every games, Australia's sporting bodies should not bow to political pressure to boycott, but rather should indeed send a team to Moscow.

[26] In the mid-1990s Coates together with Leo Wallner, then Austrian Olympic Committee president and head of Casinos Austria, joined with the Australian Olympic Committee's investment arm, under Coates' leadership, to invest in the establishment of a casino in Cairns in north-east Australia.

[28] Coates and Sydney radio host Alan Jones have had a long-standing feud that has occasionally ended in litigation.

[29][30] In April 2007, this litigation was concluded when Coates was awarded $360,000 damages when a jury found a broadcast made by Jones in December 2004 conveyed defamatory meanings.

[32] In July 2021 Coates was criticised for a rude action with Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at a Brisbane 2032 press conference held during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

He is a former deputy chairman and non-executive director of David Jones; and former partner in the Sydney law firm of Kemp Strang.

He is a former director of the Australian subsidiaries of Grosvenor Group, a property development company privately owned by the Duke of Westminster.