It can be rather endearing when someone who is not a native English speaker mixes their metaphors. At the end of an intense, five-hour debate about the future Olympic formats, FEI president Ingmar De Vos told me that “we can’t keeping going round and round the hot potato.” I did know how he felt, though.
On Tuesday morning at the FEI Sports Forum in Lausanne, there was total deadlock between politicians and rider representatives over the principles of a) four in a team or b) three with no drop score, and at one point it was in danger of becoming Groundhog Day.
First, someone bureau-related – De Vos or FEI vice president and jumping committee chair John Madden – would set out the case for three in a team, the only way to get more flags at the Games within the Olympic quota of 200 horses under the Agenda 2020 proposals. “The math is the same wherever you are in the world,” said Madden.
Then a senior official, coach or rider representative would strongly argue for four, labouring the welfare ramifications, especially in eventing, if a struggling combination felt under pressure to get home, however appalling their completion score. Judy Fasher, chairman of Equestrian Australia, said the likely low completion rate with three would give the IOC a “cast iron excuse” to remove eventing from the Olympic programme anyway.
Debate moderator Tim Hadaway then offered someone on the fringes a say, before another of the major players – Germany, the US, the Netherlands – started the whole weary three-versus-four cycle all over again.
Mike Etherington-Smith, cross-country course-design supremo and chair of a European federation working group which has spent 100s of hours on this thorny topic, lamented that the FEI was trying to “straightjacket” three diverse horse sports into the same solution.
Things got quite strained at times. John Madden apologised for using the word “arrogant” to describe successful nations who think lesser countries will dilute “excellence.” German federation chief Sonke Lauterbach had to explain that when he said three in a team would make it even more likely “Germany would win everything,” he was only doing so in support of four to a team so as to keep the podium more open. USEF’s Will Connell, a logistics ace, said three in a team would lead to more, not less, expense for participants because of the requisite reserve horse per squad. He wished the FEI good luck getting all those extra accreditations past the IOC.
While dressage riders seemed resigned to three, jumpers also hated four. In the middle of discussing something completely different on Monday, Steve Guerdat unexpectedly declared his wholesale opposition to the jumping proposals.
“Four riders with a drop score is not that difficult for the public to understand,” Guerdat said. Regarding the public appeal of the Nations Cup, which broadcasters apparently think is tedious and drawn out, the Olympic champion observed: “I am seeing packed stadiums in the second round at least of all the team contests I ride in. If TV thinks they are too long, then maybe don’t show it all.” Elenora Ottaviani, director of the International Jumping Riders Club, came up with research that showed that every other jumper you’ve ever heard of in jumping feels the same as Steve.
By the final scheduled session, the survivors were so mentally drained that the much-vaunted discussion on the Eventing Name Change lost its mojo before it even started; none of the options on the table – Equestrian Triathlon, Equestrio (actually the name of a European magazine) and two things that sounded like Equestrathon but probably were not – hit the spot. FEI eventing director Catrin Norinder was reduced to googling for possible hybrids including the word cross (as in country) before it was decided to call a halt to a very long day. This particular discussion would continue in another time and place.
But I think it is time to accept it’s going to be three in a team and apply some lateral thinking to make it work without further belittling each sport. The “emerging” nations comprise by far the larger portion of the FEI’s 132 member federations, so of course three will get through when put to the General Assembly at the end of this year in Tokyo. Not being a matter of Statute, it will need only a simple majority vote.
It was interesting to hear countries who rarely utter a peep on these occasions – Belarus, for instance – enthuse about their prospects for increased investment in their national sport if they can finally entertain the notion of Olympic participation. Dressage icon Kyra Kyrklund made the same point; she must have been to six Games as the sole Finn, and what an inspiration she has been to Scandanavia and beyond.
The Czech delegate mentioned the desire of vaulting to become an Olympic sport; any failure of the existing sports to adapt – change or be changed is the IOC’s message – would queer the pitch for vaulting too, he opined.
A misguided suggestion from the floor suggested that endurance was also an Olympic candidate was met by laughter and howls of derision, which must have been gutting for practitioners of the “classic” sport. I must say the UAE were awfully quiet, leaving a girl from Estonia to fight their corner; she was also shouted down.
In the end, David O’Connor came to the rescue, for eventing at least: if three is inevitable, he said, the format should be CIC, for statistics showed more teams were likely to finish if cross-country was last. De Vos enjoyed this intervention, which he said showed a sport thinking creatively. It will now be taken up by the eventing technical committee.
O’Connor added: “The danger of the Olympics being a place of non-completion is a very real fact. The CIC could be the best product we are putting out there to showcase our sport without a drop score.”
The sheer intensity and duration of the Olympic debate upset some of the record 315 participants who had travelled immense distances to discuss the non-Olympic sports but were given little time, if any, to speak. There were angry exchanges between the Forum organisers and delegates from, among others, Malaysia and Chile.
This was certainly one of the “newsiest” FEI debating sessions I have ever attended; media colleagues who tend to skip the Forum missed a treat. Alban Poudret, editor of Swiss magazine Le Cavalier Romande, reckoned he has enough material for 10 editorials.
Slightly less successful, perhaps, in terms of intellectual stimulation and meaningful conclusion was the whole first day devoted to the recruitment, training, retention and possible payment of officials, a “duty” topic that most definitely falls into the Important But Boring category.
It became interesting for reasons not associated with subject itself. First, it exposed how little each discipline knows about how the others organise themselves and, indeed, what the FEI doesn’t know about its own member sports. It was news to everyone that reining judges can earn around $500 a day and that riders contribute at $20-$30 a throw.
Meanwhile, other under-funded, sponsor-hungry disciplines sat bemused as show jumping interests cheerfully discussed their willingness to forgo, say £20,000 of a £500,000 prize pot so that officials could be remunerated, as they richly deserved, to do a professional job. Eventually Wayne Channon, secretary-general of the International Dressage Riders Club, observed that if his sport rewarded judges out of their prize money pool it would be the equivalent of a pay decrease.
It also did not go unnoticed only nine of the 45 top table expert panellists over two days, came from countries outside Europe and North America.
I am not sure we learned anything about officials that could not have been surmised from an online questionnaire. The Forum is such a valuable annual gathering its timetable could have been utilised for lots more than this.
On the uplifting front, distinguished Los Angeles sports journalist Alan Abrahamson, a member of the IOC’s press committee, told us to embrace the challenge of remaining in the Olympics as an opportunity to re-present horse sport for its own sake, not solely a task borne of desperation. He underlined the involvement of youth, and that there is more to social media than Facebook and Twitter. He spoke about his 16 and 19-year old daughters’ fixation with something called SnapChat. A videoed vox-pop drummed home just how little the man in the street knows what we equestrians do. John Madden said Beezie often describes herself as a “horseback rider” to make things simple.
FEI corporate communications director Richard Johnson said the social media tools we all thought we’d cracked at London 2012 were already irrelevant. This led into a slick and rousing launch of the central plank of the FEI’s communications strategy for Rio and beyond, the “Two Hearts” [one each for horse and rider, obviously] social media campaign. A Two Hearts “tool kit” will be provided to all national federations to join in the promotional activity and in their own languages. Yikes. I felt like a dinosaur, and I daresay so did all of the eight or nine heavyweights who thereafter took to the stage for the Agenda 2020 debate; all male, all 50 or 60-something and all wearing sober dark suits. Yep, the FEI and our sport has an awful lot of reinventing and engagement to do!
