WORKING AT RYANAIR AND THE FAI WAS JUST A WARM-UP...
Ireland’s Olympic chief has huge task sorting out Tokyo reboot
AS the world copes with a crisis unknown in living memory, there are some in positions of leadership who at least have the benefit of working through turbulence in the past.
No executive in any business has experience specific to these ravaging circumstances, but a grounding in extremely challenging environments is of at least some value in responding to the blizzard of issues confronting every facet of life.
Peter Sherrard should be fine-tuning preparations for Tokyo 2020 today.
For the chief executive of the Olympic Federation of Ireland, this week and the weeks thereafter, all the way up to July 24 and the long-planned start-date of the Games, should be a blur of detail and anticipation.
Instead, Sherrard must now lead a reset of all of those preparations. The granular details are bewildering: bookings and orders around training camps, hotel rooms, flights, apparel, and food and drink supplies must all be changed.
There were hopes of an Irish team numbering between 80 and 100, and all of those hopefuls, as well as those with more remote ambitions of becoming an Olympian, require engagement, as well as their federations and coaches.
The work-load is immense, and must be tackled – all with the realisation that the Olympics could be up to a year and a half still away. No date has been finalised for next year, with suggestions veering between spring and late summer.
Whenever they do take place, Sherrard and the OFI can call upon the efficiency, sound communication and transparency that have transformed the reputation of the Irish Olympic movement since the scandals of 2016.
And Peter Sherrard has his own personal business background to call upon – having worked in two of the most controversial organisations in Irish life, he knows something of what it is to work through difficulty.
A CV that includes time spent at Ryanair and the Football Association of Ireland might still not be enough to prepare for the ravages of Covid-19, but they must leave a man acquainted with what it is to work in trying conditions, relatively speaking.
He was head of communications for Ryanair in the mid-2000s, a time when the airline was at its most pugnacious and Michael O’Leary a regularly bombastic presence in the press.
The Ryanair stunts were reliable generators of free coverage, yet it is hard to square the softly spoken, multi-lingual Sherrard – he speaks French and Italian, and headed up the Ryanair marketing campaign in Italy – with a company that, at its most successful, seemed to relish belligerent relationships with competitors, regulators, governments, and anyone else that fancied it.
But behind the din, of course, Ryanair was one of the biggest success stories ever seen in Irish business, its approach underlined by intelligent strategising but also a ferocious dedication to hard work. That was reflected in an interview Sherrard did with a public relations’ bulletin in 2006, and where some of the workings of the famed Ryanair communications team were revealed.
In fact, there really wasn’t a team behind all of the gimmicks, photoshoots and set-ups that got so much attention. It was Sherrard and one other person, based in their Dublin office.
‘We don’t need to be any bigger,’ he reckoned. ‘The airline industry is full of massive comms teams that don’t do anywhere near the work we do.’ From there, he moved to the FAI, another institution regularly tangled in contentious headlines.
The big different between Ryanair and his new employers, though, was success. The former thrived in the midst of their battles, while the FAI had a knack for stumbling into needless difficulties.
These regularly involved John Delaney. Sherrard worked first as communications director, including during the Giovanni Trapattoni years. While the great Italian had a dedicated translator, Sherrard’s fluency in the language helped to smooth some of the many wrinkles that would emerge during Trapattoni’s intense media appearances.
This period of his career also included Euro 2012, when Ireland flopped on the pitch and Delaney consistently attracted headlines off the field, often due to his socialising with supporters.
Given the snowstorm of uncomplimentary headlines generated through those years, Sherrard had one of the most challenging jobs in the administration of Irish sports.
Roles followed as interim commercial manager and operations director, before he was appointed to take executive control of the rehabilitated Olympic body in this country in February 2018.
BY that point, president of the OFI, Sarah Keane, had led what was effectively a corporate cleanup operation following the disastrous events of August 2016, and the consequences that resulted.
A big part of Sherrard’s job was leading the renewal of the organisation, rebranded the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
If that was an important symbolic break with a wretched recent past, more practical change was enacted, too.
Relations were improved with individual sports as well as Sport Ireland, after many years when the old Olympic Council of
Ireland used its position as gatekeepers to the prestige of the Games, guarding access jealously.
New sponsors were attracted, new relationships built – the most important of which were with the athletes, who are supposed to be the point of the entire Olympic project in the first place.
From his appointment, Peter Sherrard has sought to put them at the centre of the story.
‘I share the board’s commitment to placing athletes and federations at the centre of everything we do at the OCI,’ he said in his opening message.
He has been true to that, a point recently emphasised by details that the OFI had announced of athletes’ travel arrangements to Tokyo this summer.
The plan was to fly them all in business class, a move that seems logical but would have been unthinkable in the past, despite long-hall drags to Sydney, Beijing and Rio. And as recently as this week, when the Games seemed
certain to be cancelled but an official decision was still awaited, he told RTÉ that athletes must remain central to whatever decision was taken.
‘I am comfortable with the fact that they (the International Olympic Committee) have said that whatever decision they reach, athlete safety will be first.
‘They are not going to do anything that will jeopardise the health and safety of our athletes.’
With the decision now made, Irish athletes have met it with combinations of disappointment and determination.
Some are already working on revised training schedules, aiming to be ready in 12 months if, as seems most likely, a late-summer date is chosen for 2021.
Their attitudes are admirable examples of the best of the Olympic spirit. And they find reflection in the Irish Olympic movement, renewed and ready to adapt in a churning world.