Geoffrey Edelsten found dead in Melbourne apartment - Sydney Morning Herald

Australian businessman Geoffrey Edelsten has been found dead in his Melbourne home.

Victoria Police confirmed that the body of a man in his late 70s was discovered on Friday afternoon in a St Kilda Road apartment.

Geoffrey Edelsten with his then fiancee Brynne Gordon at Bondi Beach in 2009.Credit:Sasha Woolley

Mr Edelsten, 78, was best known as the flamboyantly dressed former owner of the Sydney Swans football club.

He started his career as a general practitioner and founded the Allied Medical Group.

Mr Edelsten was one of the-then VFL’s characters of the 1980s and seemed to have it all when, living a flashy lifestyle, boasting a string of medical clinics and with young blonde wife Leanne in tow, he became the first private owner of the Swans in 1985..

He famously bought Leanne a pink sports car, a De Tomaso, but denied what became a legendary tale that he also had a pink helicopter, insisting to The Age in 2011 that it had been a blue-and-white chopper “which I used to fly to Liverpool hospital to deliver babies”.

Photographs from the time show Mr Edelsten was right.

After buying the Swans, he launched an audacious recruiting raid, securing the blue-chip talent of Greg Williams, Gerard Healy and Merv Neagle to play alongside the high-flying Warwick Capper, ensuring the league’s ugly ducklings became an instant success.

He reportedly even offered to buy a school for Essendon ruckman Simon Madden, a schoolteacher, to entice him north but denied this to The Age.

“This is a sore point. It’s absolute nonsense he was offered a school,” he said.

Madden was offered a $1 million contract to be paid over 10 years, with the intention he would become an assistant coach when he retired.

Despite bringing the glitz and glamour to the club, including the introduction of the dancing girls dubbed The Swanettes, Mr Edelsten was gone by July 1986 when he was sacked as chairman.

He remained a life-long Carlton supporter although in 2014 he told The Age he feared for his life from irate supporters, having owed the club $150,000 as part of a $1 million donation.

The Blues’ aquatic centre and cafe was named after him at the time.

Mr Edelsten did not shy away from the red carpet and in 2009 married young American socialite Brynne Gordon. He later married Gabi Grecko, who was 46 years his junior, in 2015.

At the Melbourne Cup one year earlier the-then 71-year-old arrived in the Melbourne Cup Birdcage with the sole intention of stealing the show.

Down on one knee in front of a bedazzled 25-year-old Grecko, he pulled out a sparkly ring outside the Emirates Marque and before a swelling press pack, popped the question. Grecko murmured a sedate “yes”, before the two were whisked inside the marquee.

Mr Edelsten’s death is not being treated as suspicious and coroners report is being prepared.

More to come

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2021-06-11 08:53:17Z
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