With the Pan Am Games looming a mere two weeks away, I am starting to (maybe) get excited (just a little) about my exotic adventure to Toronto. I usually prefer my Pan Ams in spicier locales, such as Rio and Guadalajara; but until I am reincarnated as a wined, dined and (dare I say) financially incentivized member of PASO/IOC, I’ll just have to grin and bear Canada’s most business-like city. You know what I regret for purely selfish reasons? That Rob Ford isn’t mayor any more. Imagine all the fun and blog material he would provide.
Not that there won’t be plenty of material for my ever-hungry blog at these Pan Am Games, of course. If you can ever count on things going sideways, it’s at events with budgets bigger than the GDP of small Caribbean islands. I’m staying through cross country day based entirely on the expectation that the traffic and parking clusters alone will be worth witnessing – and blogging about.
Now, you may have heard some scuttlebutt about the Eventing team having a repatriated ex-pat on it. The rumour is true, as evidenced by the now-complete Canadian team list which was put on the EC site with not so much as a tiny whisper late last week. I know TO2015 imposed a gag order on all team announcements before June 13, but surely now that the cat is out of the bag, it wouldn’t be such a sin to give a little shout out to the reserve athletes who were only confirmed in the days following the June 13th team roll out?
As leaked by Eventing Nation ten days ago, Stuart Black has indeed returned to the Canadian fold, and is the traveling reserve for the Eventing team. I asked Amie O’Shaughnessy, EC’s first ever High Performance Director, for confirmation before the complete list was posted at the end of last week, and as I’ve come to expect from Amie – who formerly ran EC’s best oiled machine, the Para discipline committee – received the following thorough statement:
“· Stuart was born in Macclesfield, England. He moved to Canada at the age of 17 and became a Canadian citizen.
· Stuart has represented the Canadian Equestrian Team multiple times, including the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 1998 FEI World Equestrian Games in Rome.
· In 2004 Stuart married an American and moved to the U.S. He changed his sport nationality to American.
· In December 2014, Stuart applied to change his sport nationality to Canada. The process to change sport nationality as defined by FEI Rules was duly followed. The Canadian sport nationality was approved by the FEI prior to his first FEI international competition in 2015.
· Stuart applied to be considered as a member of the Canadian Eventing Team at the TORONTO 2015 Pan Am Games within the allowed time period and was in possession of a current Canadian passport (a requirement for application).
· Stuart’s Canadian sport nationality has been accepted by the FEI and the Canadian Olympic Committee.
· Equine Canada can confirm that Stuart holds a current Canadian Passport and also that the FEI approved the documents he supplied to meet the Canadian residency requirements.”
So there.
I’m still waiting for a response from the FEI regarding Pablo Barrios’ continued evasion of sanctioning. It will be interesting to see if I get anything concrete before the Venezuelan Pan Am jumping team announcement is made…
