You would have to have been born yesterday (or at least more recently than the last Olympics) to be alarmed by the myriad of articles appearing in Toronto newspapers regarding cost overruns and behind-schedule venue completions for this summer’s Pan American Games. It’s a familiar tune: as a major Games approaches, local media have a field day enumerating all the ways in which this Games will turn out to be a disaster. And then, when the opening ceremonies ultimately take place on schedule, miraculously there are roofs on all the buildings and the Games are pulled off after all.
Equestrian sports have not been spared the media’s hairy eyeball as the date of the 2015 Pan Am Games approaches. In June 2014, the Caledon Enterprise, a newspaper published in the city where the TO2015 equestrian events will take place, published an opinionated story about a $1.1 million travel subsidy for horses traveling to the Pan Am Games. The article’s author, Matthew Strader, liberally quoted an ex-MPP named Rod Jackson (Barrie), a man who holds a dim view of the travel subsidy. When the article came out, it raised eyebrows within the Canadian equestrian community. The first thought that came to many minds was how far a million dollars would go toward helping the Canadian Equestrian Team, rather than helping its rivals get to Toronto.
But is a travel subsidy really such an abominable idea? The goal of the funding is to guarantee the strongest and most international field possible, with coveted Olympic classifications being awarded to true champions of the Americas. It would seem that the Toronto media and politicians who have expressed shock and dismay are turning the proverbial mole hill into something much bigger.
Travel Subsidies – A Brief History
When the Summer Olympics were held in Sydney, Australia, the travel costs for virtually every single nation besides Australia in any sport were enormous, and even greater for equestrian teams. Kevin Dove is a senior manager of media relations at TO2015. “The equine support grant has been used to help offset some of the costs for athletes in past multi-sport games including Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008,” he says. “Canadian athletes have been recipients of this grant in the past.” Dove points out that the 2011 Pan Am Games in Guadalajara were the first Pan Am Games to offer travel subsidies, although they were only for human athletes. TO2015 is the first Pan Am organizing committee to dedicate funds to the transport of horses.
The Enterprise story indirectly suggests that someone had suddenly decided to give $1.1 million to “‘fly horses around,” as Jackson was quoted as having said. “It could be more now,” he hinted ominously before wondering out loud if the money was within the Games’ $1.4 billion budget, or if it was an extra expense. In fact, the funding for horse transport has always been part of Toronto’s bid, which was made in 2009, and it is contained within the Games’ budget. When Toronto submitted its bid for the Pan Am Games, $10.6 million had been budgeted for athlete travel assistance across all sports. “The Travel Support Grant is a common practice at multi-sport Games and has been done at the Olympic level since 2000, at the Pan Am Games since 2011, and even at sub-regional events,” says Dove. Equestrian is merely catching up to what’s been commonplace for other sports.
Show Them the Money
In his story, Strader makes reference to a 2011 memo sent by then-CEO of Equine Canada Akaash Maharaj to the executive of the Pan American Equestrian Confederation (PAEC) and the FEI. The travel subsidy was just one item among many in Maharaj’s update to PAEC and the FEI on TO2015’s equestrian events. One item that has changed since Maharaj’s memo is the eligibility for funds. “There have certainly been changes since I wrote the memo four years ago, such as the fact that the Canadian and American teams were originally ineligible, but it seems that this is no longer the case,” says Maharaj. TO2015 has confirmed that Canadian and American equestrian teams are now eligible for the travel subsidy.
At the time he wrote the memo, Maharaj said the $1.1 million represented the “single largest investment in the hemispheric development of equestrian sport in our region’s history … Canada’s development subsidy for the Pan American zone will be approximately four-and-a-half times the value of the FEI’s annual contribution to its development fund for the entire planet.” While the FEI has no policy for funding horse transport for regional games, it is currently in discussions with TO2015 regarding a related issue. The Pan Am Games are the only opportunity for many countries in the Americas to gain Olympic qualification, and it has been negotiated that 30 horses, in addition to the 150-horse quota, will compete in Toronto. “There was a similar situation for the Guadalajara 2011 Pan American Games,” says an FEI media spokesperson. “The expenses [for the extra horses] were paid by a USEF fund created using the surplus of one of the FEI World Cup Finals at Las Vegas. This fund, which was set up for development purposes in the Americas, was a one-off.” In order to avoid spreading TO2015’s travel subsidy over a greater number of horses, the FEI is working with TO2015 to ensure that the extra costs for these 30 horses will be covered.
Former EC president Mike Gallagher was involved with writing the Pan Am Games transportation manual for TO2015. A past chef de mission for Canada at Olympic, Pan Am, and World Equestrian Games, Gallagher has considerable experience when it comes to the transport of team horses. He was recently appointed the transport supervisor for the TO2015 Equestrian Sport Organizing Committee. “Toronto 2015 asked PAEC to come up with an equitable formula for the distribution of the one million dollars, which we did at the FEI General Assembly in 2013 in Montreux, Switzerland,” says Gallagher. “It was unanimously approved by all countries that were in attendance.”
The formula used to calculate eligibility for the subsidy is straightforward and logical. Rather than being based on the location of the country the horse is representing, it’s based on the horse’s origin of travel. There are three categories: horses based in the US and Canada will receive $800; horses coming from Europe receive approximately $5,500, and horses based in South or Central America are eligible for around $9,000. “A Canadian horse based in Europe would get the European grant,” Gallagher explains. “A Colombian horse based in New York would get $800.”
The formula also takes into account the travel costs of making a team. “It is based on a travel date after January 1, 2015,” says Gallagher. If a horse travels from South America to compete in Florida in January in order to qualify for the Pan Am Games, and succeeds in going to Toronto, the grant the athlete receives will be based on the horse having come from South America.
A Helping Hand, Not a Handout
Dove points out that the travel subsidy is not a free ride. “It is important to note that the grant does not cover all of the costs, but is meant to offset a portion of the cost.” Gallagher recalls that the cost of flying the Canadian horses to Rio eight years ago was in the range of $25,000 per horse. Even athletes who receive the maximum amount of $9,000 are receiving only a fraction of the total costs for transporting their horses to Toronto. “The objective of the program was to make it possible for the broadest range of countries to participate in the equestrian disciplines at the Toronto Pan Am Games by ensuring that the cost of horse transport would not be an insurmountable barrier to capable riders from smaller nations,” says Maharaj. There were short-, medium- and long-term goals: “to protect the status of the Pan Am Games as an Olympic qualifier, to connect the Canadian horse industry with high performance riders from across the hemisphere, and to strengthen equestrian sport beyond Europe.”
Canadian critics of the Pan Am travel subsidy might argue that a million dollars would go a long way to helping Canadian teams and athletes pursue international success. But they would have to ignore the fact that these funds were part of the bid that won Toronto the Games, and they do not come out of any existing Canadian Equestrian Team financial programs. Others may point out that Canada’s equestrian teams have never received money to get their horses to such far-flung destinations as Rio De Janeiro. But if Toronto is setting a precedent for future Pan Am Games equestrian teams, Canada can expect to reap the benefits when the team heads to Lima in 2018.
Helping athletes travel to Toronto this summer is based on the ideal of fair play and developing the sport universally. “This provides relief so that more money can be invested in athlete training and development, as opposed to the logistics of participating in international competition,” says Dove. Canadian and US teams will spend far less getting to Toronto than teams from Latin America; in a perfect world, it would cost everyone exactly the same. But in the absence of funds to make that possible, TO2015’s $1.1 million horse travel grant is making it a bit more feasible for the rest of the region to get to Toronto, and to be in a position to excel. At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about?
