Well, really more of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma stuffed inside Pandora’s box placed in a safety deposit box and the key thrown overboard from a boat floating above the Mariana Trench. Honestly, I’ve been surprised more times by Princess Haya than by any single individual in twelve years of equestrian journalism. And once again, I’m coming up (almost) empty after dredging the depths for an explanation to her latest actions.
I listened as carefully as I could to the recording of the press conference call with HRH the other day, except for one boring section in the middle when the Angry Birds Rio 2 game I was playing distracted me from yet another deflected question asked by yet another European journalist. It would seem that the only continent which cares about the FEI Presidency is the European one. Or European journos are the only ones ballsy enough to ask the tough questions (NB: I was unable to go onto the conference call due to a family emergency, just in case you think my cojones have shriveled). Not that they got any joy for their efforts to glean some between-the-lines insight. HRH is an absolute genius when it comes to the politically useful skill of appearing to answer a question while giving nothing away.
When I wasn’t trying to figure out how to get the toucan to take out the monkeys (which look more like ugly koalas with fangs) behind the big tree, I took a few notes from the conference call. But considering it was 45 minutes long, the material was pretty thin. Someone asked HRH about her humanitarian work with the UN, which she lept to answer in great detail, and which had less than zero relevance to the FEI. Here are the few items of actual note that I observed, along with my own sense of their relevance (on the usual dressage scale of one to ten with half marks allowed) to her decision not to stand for a third term:
1. I had never noticed before how much she stutters. Not like speech impediment stuttering, more like self-deprecatory affectation. I’m not sure if she was doing it more in this conference or if the absence of a visual made me notice it for the first time. Relevance rating 0.5
2. She talked about ‘family’ a lot. This is not a new habit for HRH, and its frequent use in the past has led me to draw perhaps exaggerated – but perhaps not – parallels with the Mafia’s ‘famiglia’. Her repeated use of ‘family’ in reference to her relationship with the FEI did cause me to realize one thing though. Her contributions to the FEI may be hard to measure (except for all the money that’s come in thanks to her connections) but if there is one stamp she has made on the organization it’s on the culture of the FEI. I don’t think any of us doubts for a minute that hers has been a very hands-on presidency, both when it comes to the volunteers (remember the dethroning of Mariette?) and the paid staff (starting with the dismissal of her first Secretary General Michael Stone). Relevance rating 3.
3. She insisted that the problems in Endurance have nothing to do with her decision to not run again, and argued that if endurance were a factor she would have made this decision four years ago, not now. Weeeellll, I don’t think that’s quite ‘on’ as an argument. Endurance was nowhere near in the state of disrepair in which it finds itself today, and we weren’t all bandying about the conflict of interest thing with nearly the level of enthusiasm we’ve had over the past year. I thought it was perhaps not entirely wise of HRH to mention the FEI Integrity Unit in the same breath, since for some of us the octopus-like involvement of Lord Stevens in the opposing positions of Sheikh Mohammed and the FEI is at the heart of much of the aforementioned conflict of interest. Relevance rating 7.5.
4. Finally, right in the final few minutes of the conference call, HRH betrayed something that, while subtle, may be the most meaningful thing she didn’t quite say. Asked about the timing of her announcement just a couple of weeks before the September 1 deadline for presidential candidates to throw their hats into the ring (we’ve got just the one so far, the bookish-looking Pierre Genecand), she replied as follows: “As soon as I knew that that really was a reality I moved as fast as I could.” This was quite literally the last thing HRH said in answer to the very last question asked during the conference. There is an unmistakable suggestion that something sudden brought about her decision to not run for a third term (in direct contradiction to her whole-hearted embracing of the notion in April of this year). Will any of us ever know exactly what was the real reason for this about-face? Obviously there are at least a few people moving about the Earth who do know the answer, and perhaps by the time WEG is under way there will be at least whisperings around the media centre. The only thing I can say that I believe for certain is that HRH’s decision to not run again has a (potentially earth shattering) cause we have not been told about. Relevance rating: 9.5
Why should any of us care about it all anway? There are many reasons that I won’t list here now, and if you’ve made it this far through today’s post you probably don’t need to have them enumerated anyway.
