Today’s post starts with a couple of handy hints to the Canadian Eventing High Performance folks. To the riders: if you want to get on a team, you have to fill out this silly little document called a declaration form, and probably (but I’m not sure since the Canadian Eventing website never bothered posting its criteria or any WEG forms on the EC website) send in a cheque for a few hundred bucks. I know it seems like a bit of a pain, and well, you’re out there competing aren’t you? I mean, isn’t it a given that EVERYONE wants to be on the team? But still, everyone has to do it and it would hardly be fair to waive that bit of paper work for one rider.
Now here’s my advice to the team selectors: get a folder. Actually get two. One would be electronic, on your computers. The other would be old school, for just in case technology fails, as it is known to do from time to time. Inside those paper and electronic folders you would keep copies of all the documents pertinent to your selecting a team – such as the athletes’ declaration forms.
There is nothing like getting a team off on the wrong foot by publicly naming a team member who isn’t actually eligible, such as was the case with Kathryn Robinson. EC has yanked its original announcement and left only the corrected one up on its site, but the hosts of this very blog, in the interests of thorough journalism, did not – so if you didn’t see the initial announcement, you can find it here.
I will say one thing about the correction, which was released a lengthy 12 days after the first announcement: its author left very little to the imagination.
As an EC discipline committee, the Eventers haven’t kept up to the Joneses in the information dissemination department (more on that in a bit), though they aren’t quite as bad as the non-Olympic disciplines, which don’t seem to have discovered the internet yet. So I did find it just a tad corner-of-lips-pulling ironic that the official corrected team announcement spells out in gory detail what can only be called gross incompetence on the part of the selectors. No hiding the nasty bits there, no sirree. It doesn’t get any more confessional than this statement:
“Kathryn Robinson, Kettering, GBR, formerly named to the WEG Team, was deemed ineligible when it was unfortunately discovered, subsequent to the Team being announced on June 20th, that Ms. Robinson had not declared herself as a candidate for selection to WEG by the mandatory deadline specified in the WEG selection criteria. As such, she was not eligible for selection. Equine Canada regrets that this situation occurred but believes it is of paramount importance that all Equine Canada disciplines implement team selection processes that are consistent, fair and transparent.”
I’m even a bit surprised the correction stopped short of identifying who was at fault, as well as the name of the person who brought this ostrich sized egg-on-face to the committee’s attention.
The team that is going to Normandy, now that due diligence has been belatedly performed, is a group of riders who have all been on teams together before, and I have no doubt they’ve already put this little mess behind them as they prepare for WEG. It’s just too bad they now have a very good reason for questioning the ability of those who selected them to give them the support they need and deserve in order to succeed.
The baring of the soul contained in the corrected team announcement is definitely exception rather than rule for the CEC, as evidenced by the fact that not a peep has come out regarding the resignation of Graeme Thom from his role as High Performance Chair and long-time team Chef d’Equipe. If the Eventing committee wanted to keep this one a secret, it’s already an ill-kept one – very ill-kept. And here’s my real problem with the complete absence of any announcement: Graeme was the guardian angel of the eventing team these past ten years. I am not exaggerating, not even a little. Just ask any rider who was on the team over that period. He is a shining example of the volunteer who has both the right skill sets and the right reasons for spending the equivalent of a full time job’s worth of hours (and more when he traveled with the team) on being the team chef and overall awesome uncle of the Canadian eventers.
Whatever Graeme’s reasons are for leaving, he deserves a mighty big hand shake and ‘thanks for EVERYTHING” from the CEC. It’s called respect.
Here is one final piece of unsolicited advice to the folks who think it wise to sit on the news of Graeme’s departure like a fart on an airplane – hoping it will be absorbed into the upholstery. Everyone is going to find out anyway, and I can guarantee that the rumour mill will churn out a story far worse than the truth. If I were the chef who is going to replace Graeme (and I understand there is one in place, though true to form there is nothing official), I’d be kicking up a fuss about getting out in front of this story before it makes the new chef’s job more difficult than herding a team of smart, talented, independent-minded athletes already is.
(Note to Les: I hope I didn’t disappoint you today)
