AN ‘OUT WITH THE OLD’ REFIT
Olympics overhaul after 2016 shows FAI the way...
There was a symbol of renewal this week
AS a measure of the changes within the Irish Olympic movement, the contribution of Fergus O’Dowd in committee room four of the Houses of the Oireachtas could not be bettered.
In one of the rare powerful contributions at the appearance of the FAI before the committee on sport, O’Dowd urged the FAI hierarchy to go, for the sake of change.
And he cited the changes wrought in the Olympic movement here after the traumas of 2016 as an example for Irish soccer to follow.
That would have been inconceivable in the traumatic weeks and months that followed the ticketing controversy that exploded around Pat Hickey and the Irish Olympic movement at Rio in August 2016.
Acrimony, controversy and tireless testimony about the governance dysfunction within the-then Olympic Council of Ireland followed.
Yet less than three years later, a senior politician, in pleading for change within another sports organisation engulfed in governance upheaval, could cite the Irish Olympic movement as a model of best practice.
‘I’d never be complacent about it,’ said Peter Sherrard, chief executive of the rebranded Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI), on the issue of regeneration earlier this week.
‘There has been a huge amount of work done. We still have to really ensure that we keep a real focus on that and don’t lose sight of that. That’s ever-present.’
Sherrard was speaking at the latest in a long line of good-news announcements by the Irish Olympic body. This time, it was unveiling the city of Fukuroi as a pre-Games base for the Irish team at next year’s Games in Tokyo.
An extensive support staff, which will include former Olympian Gavin Noble as one of two deputy chefs de mission, was also announced.
This follows the dramatic upheaval of the post-Hickey age, which included the election of Sarah Keane as a new president, and the appointment of Sherrard as CEO.
There was a powerful symbolism of renewal this week, too, when the OFI named the company chosen as their ticket reseller for Tokyo.
National Olympic committees nominate an authorised ticket reseller (ATR), through which the country’s ticket allocation for the Games is sold.
This was at the heart of the Rio drama, when tickets from the Irish allocation were found in the possession of an employee of a company that was not authorised to sell tickets for the 2016 Olympics.
Keane said that in making agreements with their chosen ATR, the Finnish company Elamys, the OFI had decided not to accept a fee, despite being offered one by some of the companies they considered for the job.
That is indicative of the care the organisation takes in doing its business now, a point emphasised by Keane.
‘When I went to the ANOC (Association of National Olympic Committees) meeting, I was leaving and I was handed forms for my per diem, and I didn’t know about the per diems,’ she says. ‘I said I’ll take that form with me, and I brought it back and handed it to Peter and I said, “I’m not doing anything with that until we talk to the board”. ‘From my perspective, my expenses are paid by the Olympic Federation when I travel so my per diem will be going into the organisation. ‘But those things happen all the time. When that happened to me, I brought it back and discussed it with Peter, and we discussed it at board level. ‘It was in my president’s report to the board: what do we think about this? How do we feel?’ Amidst the entrails of the Hickey saga, details of the generous expenses enjoyed by highranking Olympic officials emerged. Hickey was on the executive board of the International Olympic Committee at the time, and with that status came a per diem payment of $900 per day, for every day he was on Olympic business.
The Olympics remains a potent brand, and involvement with it brings status and attendant opportunities.
‘I was offered a car by one of our sponsors, as a present to the organisation,’ says Keane. ‘That is something that would have
happened the last time.
‘I said, “No thank you, but we’re happy to take one for our staff”. We think that’s appropriate. We talk about it and we try and work out what the right thing to do is in the situation.
‘We try to be open and transparent. We’re going to trip up somewhere. We’re going to make some mistakes. We’re going to have to be standing here at some stage going, “Maybe we shouldn’t have done that; maybe it was the wrong thing to do”.
‘But we will make them as honestly and as openly as we can.’
Staffing levels have almost doubled under the new board; power is no longer concentrated in one individual.
Much of the repair work has been laborious, a painstaking job of introducing policies to cover as many eventualities as possible. On the day of this week’s announcements, a large delegation from Fukuroi was in Dublin. Keane said she received a number of gifts from the visitors and had to check and make sure the OFI had a policy to cover that, too. ‘I’m afraid to take anything or touch anything,’ she said, appearing to only slightly exaggerate. The work is paying off: two new sponsors are due to be announced in the coming weeks, and there is a bubbling sense of anticipation ahead of Tokyo. Perhaps the most important principle governing the entire policy now is that the athlete is at its centre. This seems obvious, but constitutes a daring departure in modern Irish Olympic history.
Now, though, the needs of those who will represent Ireland are the priority.
That is why Keane says the organisation will have to discuss whether board members travel to Tokyo, or if that money is needed to service athletes.
That this is a new era became clear when Fergus O’Dowd cited the transformation as an example the FAI might usefully follow.
‘We were elected in in 2017, this is 2019; it’s only two years later. You don’t change a culture that fast,’ says Sarah Keane.
‘For us, what we have to ensure is that the culture is sustainable, so when I leave this organisation, and the rest of the board, who have all bought in to the same way of operating and the same culture, that it continues, that it’s just the way things are done and everyone knows how things are done.’