Horse Sport International’s “Insider,” Pippa Cuckson provides a special report on the Endurance Strategic Planning Group:
Colleagues often preface emails with the phrase “you couldn’t make it up” when discussing the latest surreal missives from FEI press office. These words are inadequate to describe the emanations of the past few days. If anyone still needed written confirmation that the FEI is owned by the Maktoums, this was it.
News that the task force that will apply (ha!) the proposals of the Endurance Strategic Planning Group (ESPG) is not only being funded by Sheikh Mohammed, but that the six task-ees include three people close to the Maktoums, has sent shock waves around the world. Worldwide, that is, apart from the countries of Group 7, and also amongst FEI senior staffers whose capabilities to assess the perceptions of the wider horse community are surely “zapped” the second they first set foot in the King Hussein building in Lausanne – presumably by the same sort of device used to disable a horse identity microchip.
How do I know this? Well, at the time of writing, my short report about the task force had knocked the Oscar Pistorius trial and Mo Farah’s London Marathon bid off the top of the “most-read” articles on Daily Telegraph Sport online. And also I’ve had to cancel my entire weekend plans to cope with the deluge of messages, many from vets, judges, chefs and former champions in the (non-desert) endurance about the enormity of this latest crisis-in-the-crisis.
How ironic that the final recommendations offered by ESPG put further weight on measures to quash conflict-of-interest by endurance officials and to deter financial bribes.
The way this all came out was strange, comprising three different announcements over a 48-hour period when logically a single release should have set out who was doing and/or paying for what. I haven’t decided if this was the re-active button-pushing of a FEI press office clearly flailing under the weight of work attached to endurance alone, or a considered “blizzard” strategy to distract readers from the practicalities of how the months of brave work by Andrew Finding and his ESPG is to be buried. That latter seems the more likely when you consider the FEI will want to minimise negative headlines, now we are just days before the vote on the third-term presidential statute.
First of all we heard that senior FEI personnel met Sheikh Mohammed on March 30, the day after the World Cup which it seems likely they were attending, where he lent his “full support” to the ESPG proposals, and that a task force would be set up including various experts plus folk from the global sports management company IMG. IMG to date appear – though I use that word cautiously until double-checked – to have no previous connection with horse welfare or endurance issues so can at least be described an unconflicted.
Until now the FEI has refused to concede that Dubai, and especially stables owned by Sheikh Mohammed and other family members, were at the heart of the industrial-scale doping/fractures/rule-breaking catastrophe. So my first reading took this at face value: that Sheikh Mohammed was finally acknowledging there was an “issue” and was prepared to cooperate (even though change is, in fact, something he could always have enacted through Dubai Equestrian Club, had he felt so minded when first reminded of his obligations by the FEI Tribunal after his own six-month ban back in 2009).
But then it occurred to me that he was probably paying for the darn task force too. So I asked the FEI.
That same evening I attended a social function near Badminton with some Very Important Persons from the world of eventing. I was expecting all the chat to be about the perceived delay in the Jock Paget doping Tribunal. But the gossip was all about endurance, and the inference all had taken that the FEI is impotent in requiring Mohammed and his riders and trainers and officials to follow the same FEI rules as everyone else without first seeking his permission.
Next day I remembered an email I saw weeks ago, indicating support for the then embryo task force from the office of Sheikh Mohammed’s right-hand man, Saaed Al Tayer. An extract reads thus:
“I would like to offer the services of the below gentlemen as a means of further supporting the FEI in putting the findings of the Final Report and Recommendations into practice…..Mr. Mohammad Essa Al Adhab, Deputy General Manager of the Dubai Equestrian Club, Chairman of the FEI Asia & Pacific Group Endurance, holder of a degree in law and Colonel in the Dubai Police. Mr. Andrew Holmes, a qualified barrister (New Zealand) with 11 years’ experience in drafting governance policy, regulations and procedure for public, private and professional bodies….My office will cover all costs associated with above gentlemen’s time and attendance in assisting the FEI with the above initiatives, including any travel required to and from Lausanne and accommodation therein.”
Now that I have, most reluctantly, become world media expert in the endurance scandal, I am leaked 20 times more stuff than ever makes it into my articles. At the time of Mr Al Tayer’s offer I was totally absorbed by the Marmoog “ringer” revelations – but also I thought that even the FEI would not be so crass as to accept, especially as Mr Al Adhab was organiser of the Euston Park 2012 world championships where the aforementioned ringer fiasco took place. At best, he is not the most observant of people.
But now I wish I had leaked this particular leak, because it’s clear this pairing formed the core of the task force (belated FEI press release three) and the other members were then built around them. The closeness of these two is, naturally, spelled out in the FEI announcement. Neither is that of Alain Storme, who is described as a “racing and equestrian expert” – who would be known to Princess Haya due to his long-standing business association with her former show jumping coach, Paul Darragh. Thus the task force has ended up with an odd geographic representation: the six task-ees – none from IMG yet named, by the way – comprise an Emirati, two expatriate Belgians, an Australian and two New Zealanders. Does a task force working on the practical application of equine rules really need a high-powered barrister? And while I’d agree that some sort of Group 7 presence is essential for liaison and PR, this surely should not be a second Maktoum employee, especially one who has officiated on many ground juries in the very region whose lackadaisical officials are damned by the ESPG?
In a further twist, while Sheikh Mohammed’s task force funding (belated announcement, number two, nearly lost half way down the blurb) is apparently not a conflict of interest, he has withdrawn Meydan’s sponsorship from the World Equestrian Games. The Sheikh has “pointed out that Meydan is the regulator in Dubai for various equine-related matters and that so long as it remains a regulator it would be prudent for it to withdraw its sponsorship.” That’s a conclusion he could have come to ages ago. My guess is that WEG organisers did not want any more embarrassing headlines following the recent outburst by Benedicte Emond Bon, coach of the French team, who branded the WEG sponsorship “outrageous”. She added: “What annoys me deeply is to read a statement from the WEG organizers that speaks of this ‘superb project inspired by the love of horses.’ When you know what has happened in the past, it is better to say nothing!”
Sheikh Mohammed’s office has found an alternative backer, Bangalore-based SOBHA Group, partners in the Meydan development. So its really a cosmetic gesture. And he is “enabling” on-site hospitality facilities at Sartilly, the WEG endurance venue, “so that all athletes can benefit from equal facilities.” This too, completely misreads the mood. When riders have previous complained that Group 7 teams enjoy lavish facilities alongside the field of play, they are not saying they want a posh tent as well. They are saying they expect riders to be hands-on with horse-care in the dismounted bits of the competition – not facing nothing more taxing than correctly recognising their steeds after they emerge from a massage and a cup of mint tea.
Still, I guess this gesture might win some votes for Sheikh Rashid Dalmook, Mohammed’s son, in the upcoming election for athlete representative on the FEI endurance committee. Not that the endurance committee appears to have a role any more.
I was also intrigued by the official reference to Meydan, a commercial corporation, as sports regulator. What’s the function of the UAE equestrian federation, then? Again, something the FEI communiqué has written down without question, presumably because it is already conditioned to the notion of Meydan/Maktoums as the FEI’s own regulator. In that regard, there is shock too amongst the media corps that from now on, enquiries about integrity and endurance – the very last responsibility the FEI should be giving up – must be directed to the London PR company of Shimon Cohen – publicist for Quest, suppliers of the FEI integrity services whose main investigation right now is the allegation that Mohammed’s son ran a ringer at the world championship of 2012.
I am so gob-smacked by recent events that if I found an email tomorrow announcing that Mahmood Al Zarooni and Lance Armstrong are consultants, I would not be surprised.
On a recent press junket, some all-round sports writers told me they had concluded FEI was as tarnished as FIFA. What an insult – to FIFA.
