If anyone out there is genuinely surprised that Ingmar De V. has been elected FEI Prez, please raise your hand. No one? I didn’t think so. I mean, really. There could have been no other outcome.
As I read the FEI press release announcing Ingmar’s victory, I had a strange sense of déjà vu. Where had I read a very similar story before? Why, the FEI announcement of Haya’s re-election in 2010 of course! Okay, so hers was a ‘landslide’ and his was an ‘overwhelming majority’, but doesn’t that mean basically the same thing? Certainly the numbers would suggest it: number of votes Haya got in 2010: 90. Number of votes for Ingmar in 2014: 98. And you can be sure that the same political machinations and orchestrations were deployed in both elections.
Here are a few other things both FEI presidential election announcements share in common:
- The word ’emotional’ – HRH was ’emotional’ in 2010, while Ingmar was ‘clearly emotional’ four years later. Apparently Ingmar’s clear emotion (surely that means there were tears?) made an enormous impact on the FEI’s spin department; for, after having already used the word once, they repeated it a second time just two sentences later: ‘And finally, with great emotion, he thanked outgoing President Princess Haya.’ Well of course he did. Where would he be without her, after all? Gorging on Neuhaus chocolates and drowning his sorrows in Leffe blond while listening to saxophone music and reading a Maigret novel, that’s where he’d be.
- The phrase ‘in the first round of voting’ – Woe to the other candidates, whose egos took such a drubbing. Ulf Helgstrand was the wise man of the bunch, withdrawing before having to face the stark reality of how popular he and the other candidates un-handpicked by HRH would ultimately turn out to be. You know what sorts of elections see this kind of sweeping majority ‘in the first round’? Dictatorships thinly disguised as democracies.
- HRH – as my fellow HorseCanada blogger, the fierce and fearless Pippa Cuckson, wryly commented in a recent post, it’s going to be interesting to see how many ways the FEI spin dept. will find to work HRH’s name into future press releases. Because she’s not going anywhere, at least not until she manages to become IOC President. Please read this quote from ‘President’ Ingmar and then tell me with a straight face you don’t believe she’s got her arm firmly up the back of his jacket:
“Words cannot explain what she has done for our organisation. She has shown leadership, she has guided us through difficult waters, she has innovated us, she has modernised us. She has left us with a great legacy and I believe, together with many of you, that it is our responsibility to preserve the legacy and go on with the roadmap she has shown us. Words are not enough to thank her. Over the years we have become good friends, and I am thankful and grateful for your support. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Of course there are many questions still unanswered, such as whether Ingmar will gently, ever so softly, bring back his campaign to become his own boss by melding his former paid position as Sec. Gen. and new ‘volunteer’ position as ‘President’. Why the overuse of quotation marks, you ask? Well I put them on ‘volunteer’ because whether or not we see a combined Sec.Gen/President role emerge or a new Sec. Gen. hired in the spring, there can be no doubt that someone is making it worth Ingmar’s while to take the wheel. And I think it’s pretty obvious why I put them on ‘president’, for the reason suggested by the photo at the top of this blog.
While I was researching how many international sporting bodies have combined presidential/Sec. Gen roles (so far I found that Tennis has one name on both titles, but Ski, Skate and even the nefarious FIFA keep two separate bodies in two separate chairs), I noted that the position of honorary president crops up on some boards, bureaus etc. HRH was made an ‘honorary president’ at the FEI GA. Surely it’s just around the corner that the FEI will announce a statute in which honorary presidents are invited onto the bureau.
When I roll out my predictions for 2015, the one thing that will definitely not be on the list will be an expectation that the FEI is going to suddenly be transformed into a shiny new penny, completely different to the organization we have come to know – warts, corruption, conflicts of interest and all.
I must confess there was one thing Ingmar said in the FEI presidential announcement that put a big smile on my face: ‘Baku will be in my memory forever’. This must be the first time that statement has ever been made. And it may well be the last. Who of us had even heard of Baku before HRH decided to drag the GA all the way across the world’s danger zones to Azerbaijan? The FEI has deferred announcing the location of the 2015 GA until some time in the new year. I’m betting that’s so they can give Richard Branson time to work out the kinks and crashes at Virgin Galactic. Moon Assembly anyone?
