Pippa Cuckson shares her thoughts on the decisions made at the FEI’s Sports Forum and Extraordinary General Assembly.
We are just a few days short of the first anniversary of the Daily Telegraph article by yours-truly that revealed the enormity of doping in endurance yards owned by the in-laws of Princess Haya, president of the FEI. My “expose” complemented the tireless campaigning of the Swiss federation and helped lead to the creation of the Endurance Strategic Planning Group, as escalating public interest in the atrocities of Middle East endurance caused the FEI its biggest welfare crisis.
One year on we are still to extend the competitive life of a single Group VII endurance horse and I am guessing vets and judges will be saying exactly the same thing this time next year, too.
Princess Haya is set to remain president through to 2018, following a predictable landslide vote for the third-term proposals at the FEI Extraordinary General Assembly and open forum in Lausanne. This means that between now and 2018 the FEI must deliver the endurance reforms on Haya’s watch, unless her incumbency is to be remembered in years to come for solely the wrong reasons.
But, as we are so often reminded, precisely because she is married to Sheikh Mohammed, and thus conflicted, Haya has launched the endurance clean-up initiatives and then stepped back from the process of actual application. And there’s the rub. Many people tell me there was nothing wrong with the existing endurance rules. They simply needed to be enforced. Regrettably, I have never been convinced the FEI executive has the stomach to confront the main offenders out in the desert rides, let alone the plethora of swinging proposals now set out by the ESPG.
On Tuesday the FEI got no discernible shove in this direction from its national federation members. The sheer weight of support for Haya’s third term was predictably matched by the palpable air of “crisis, what endurance crisis?” from the majority of delegates. One European organiser of a prominent CSI told me he genuinely had no idea about endurance or even that there were issues.
Most delegates were in town primarily for the early morning EGA. The endurance presentation filled the gap until lunchtime, so the genuinely interested were randomly scattered amongst a largely neutral audience; stark contrast to the gathering of specialists who so passionately debated solutions on February 9th (guest blog passim).
Andrew Finding’s stark warning, in his final ESPG report, that endurance was jeopardising the status of jumping, eventing and dressage within the Olympic movement was either unread or simply went over most people’s heads. Sure, federations further voted for the creation of the new “Olympic council,” but in a day of bland rubber-stamping not one delegate queried why this new lobbying entity was needed (for info: just 18 months after the acclaimed equestrian Games in London, equestrian is suddenly required to justify its existence within the Olympic movement all over again). This is, alas, typical of the absence of curiosity among the lemming component in 21st century horse politics.
The FEI painted itself into this corner when innumerable nations were encouraged to join over the previous couple of decades. This was borne partly out of genuine desire to grow the sport, but also to convince the IOC that riding is an active pastime around the globe. Newcomers received the same voting rights as the established nations. Dozens of small countries benefitted from solidarity programmes and other funding opportunities that accelerated with Haya, and thus built up her slavishy loyal following. Now there are 131 member nations. All significant FEI decisions need a two-thirds majority vote, so countries with no likelihood of ever producing an Olympic participant, never mind a medallist, are irreversibly empowered to dictate the evolution of elite sport.
The FEI had no crystal ball, of course, to apply the failsafe of an associate membership restricting a newcomer’s entitlement until it had at least proved it knew what end the oats go in. The difficulties beginners face in assimilating complex issues was evidenced in 2009 with the now infamous vote to relax doping rules on bute.
Now, it’s almost “if you can’t beat them, join them”; they did not sign last November’s third-term petition but even Britain and Germany supported the new statute. And frankly, why wouldn’t they? By association, Haya is part of the perceived endurance image problem – yet as an IOC member she is also our best chance to steer equestrian through this latest Olympic hiccup while guaranteeing no interruption to the sport’s cash-flow.
I must not imply that little is happening on the endurance front. Clearly a huge budget has been ring-fenced, and the weeding-out and re-educating of lax officials is underway. Belatedly, the inclusion of national ride statistics has been acknowledged as important to the injuries surveillance study. The FEI, normally a stickler for process, feels some rule changes cannot wait till January 1, 2015 and will be ratified for immediate implementation. The intent seems there; can it be effective?
Other things don’t quite stack up. A new penalty-points scheme will force the suspension of the riders who lame and kill horses on a regular basis. But what’s to stop them competing nationally in the interim? Absolutely nothing. I also recall the FEI’s inertia last autumn over following up the deaths of two horses competed barely a month apart by the same teenage protégé, despite niggling from myself and a respected welfare charity.
We were assured that positive dope tests have decreased in the Middle East and some notional graphs were displayed. But I’d like absolute figures, and regular publication of all negative test results in Group VII – as happens in Groups I and II (Europe) – so that interested parties can see exactly who is and who isn’t being tested. The FEI told me some while ago this would be “rolled out” in 2014; no sign of it yet. The number of positive tests will automatically reduce pro rata if any region is simply organising fewer FEI rides, as is brazenly occurring in the UAE.
One big step forward was the FEI’s belated acknowledgement of the elephant in the room. For once, Belgian team coach Pierre Arnould was not metaphorically flogged for saying “Emirates” and “cheating” in the same sentence. Ingmar de Vos, FEI secretary-general, also said something rather revelatory. Regarding the forced decision to remove two Mohammed aides from new endurance task force, he added: “We were possibly too optimistic in wanting those who have been part of the problem to be part of the solution.”
There was still censorship, though. Questions only related to the ESPG proposals were permitted, and so Pierre’s query about the progress of the Marmoog “ringer” enquiry was deflected on the grounds of irrelevance. I’d certainly like to know what’s going on too, since I provided the FEI with the evidence myself on March 7th. That there is a case to answer is irrefutable. All we now need to find out now is why, and how they are to be punished, which is actually the job of the Tribunal once the case has been referred on to it. And even that surely can’t be too difficult because the chef d’equipe of the UAE team on that occasion is a member of the ESPG, and therefore easily tracked down.
For all its expensive PR advice, the FEI is still blithely immune to the perceptions of its own horse community (check out angst about Haya’s third term on endurance chat-rooms), never mind the wider public. Some FEI personnel remain genuinely bewildered as to why the original composition of the task force caused ructions.
The Lausanne forum attracted a couple of general news agency reporters, both of whom later expressed to me their bemusement that the FEI had just re-endorsed a president whose husband is linked to racing’s greatest steroids scandal. That was even before they’d twigged the separate endurance malaise.
And why didn’t anyone spot the potential PR own-goal of having Juma Punti Dachs on the top table for the endurance session? Sure he’s vice-chair of the technical committee, but there were already two other members alongside. Mercifully, he didn’t utter a word; had he said something quotable, these agency guys would most likely have googled Juma and discovered he is a both a Maktoum man and the temporary proprietor of the sole equestrian set-up raided by the British drugs-enforcement agencies throughout 2013.
I was also astonished to hear coffee break gossip that Meydan is considering funding some new endurance initiative in the UK. Nooooooo! Sheikh Mohammed is used to throwing huge money at solving problems, but the endurance crisis is no one-off aberration. What is it that the folks in charge still don’t get about the importance of time being served, and being seen to be served, on the naughty step?
Dubai must demonstrate its commitment to change out in the field before it retrieves things remotely resembling the right to influence what happens next. All evidence of its past winter season points to defiance of the ESPG process – demotion of rides to the less rigorously policed CENs, and still so little respect for FEI rules on the occasions they are obligatory that when yellow cards were finally scattered in the last knockings of the 2013-2014 season, half of them went to people riding for the Maktoums.
Putting aside our extreme differences in birth and opinions, it is actually difficult not to like Princess Haya. She is clever, charismatic and puts everyone at their ease. She also has an irreverent sense of humour; during the post-forum press conference she gleefully joined in a much-needed comedy moment, about prospects for the hypothetical new sport of “knock-out dressage.”
That’s why it’s hard to fathom how someone so apparently normal is able to sleep at night, knowing what goes on in the name of sport in her own back yard.
Animals don’t have the imagination to hope that a better life could follow, the emotion that sustains human beings through times of exploitation and suffering. For many hundreds of horses in the Middle East, endurance is a 24-7 torment simply to be, well, endured.
No-one in Lausanne was pretending there wasn’t still a lot of work to be done, but I am haunted by the notion that we are merely marking time.
