Body facing a choice between old order and a new direction
Who the OCI elects as its new president will determine if it is ready to embrace change
‘THE CHOICE IS BETWEEN THE OLD ORDER AND A NEW DIRECTION ’
ON February 9, the Olympic Council of Ireland will elect new officials and an executive committee at an emergency general meeting in Dublin. The OCI is considered a joke in the administration of Irish sport – a field where the competition in inadvertent humour, missteps and incapability is never less than great.
But the election in two and a half weeks is important. For one thing, the OCI provides Ireland’s connection to the Olympic Games, which for all its faults and frailties remains the most prestigious and anticipated sporting event in the world.
Secondly, it receives substantial State funding: the figure was €1.72 million in the fouryear cycle up to Rio last year.
Since the ticketing controversy and consequent arrest of outgoing OCI president Pat Hickey in Brazil last August, the reputation of the Council has suffered extensive damage. Demands for change in an institution ruled by Hickey since 1989 were passionate and frequent through last autumn and winter.
Now, the electorate on February 9 has a choice between the old order and a new direction, but the ancien regime is not receding, vanquished, as some may have expected.
This is most plainly manifest in the contest for president. Hickey’s anointed successor and faithful friend Willie O’Brien is a candidate. Change is represented in the two other names on the ballot for president: Sarah Keane of Swim Ireland and Bernard O’Byrne, chief executive of Basketball Ireland.
Sports administration is traditionally seen as the preserve of grey men scheming for modest power in a world that matters mainly to themselves. But this election represent san opportunityfor the 34 sports that constitute the OC I–some, like athletics and swimming, among the most popular in the world; others, like ice hockey and wrestling, on the margins of the landscape here – to have their say, not only on the Rio shambles, but also on the future of the Olympic movement in Ireland.
The OCI is not relevant in the lives of Olympic athletes for most of their careers. Eamonn Coghlan once described it as a travel agency ‘that comes into your life once every four years’.
Athletes receive any funding they are due through Sport Ireland. The Institute of Sport in Dublin provides training and medical assistance. Coaching is through an athlete’s particular sporting federation, or else they employ a coach themselves.
Before the establishment of the Sports Council (later Sport Ireland) funding was in the gift of the OCI, but that has long changed, too.
There is no body in the world of sport or beyond it with a higher estimation of itself than the International Olympic Committee, and the OCI is its representative here. Think papal nuncios and the Vatican – they are the terms in which the IOC views itself.
Athletes engage with the OCI come Olympic time, hence Coghlan’s comment. Scott Evans, a three-time Olympian in badminton, said after Rio: ‘You don’t hear anything from them again for another three years after the Olympics’.
Sinéad Jennings, the former rower, made a similar point, saying the Institute of Sport prepares you for the Olympics, then the OCI look after you at the Games themselves.
There are many more relevant sporting bodies in the country, but the pending elections hold a tremendous symbolic importance.
The Rio Olympics was a disaster for Ireland. This is despite two silver medals, the best track and field performance in years, and only some hotly contested judging decisions denying Ireland two medals in the boxing ring.
A failed drugs test and return home in disgrace by Michael O’Reilly was mortifying, but the ticketing scandal and later arrest of Hickey dragged Ireland through international headlines for days.
Hickey’s circumstances were greeted with unabashed glee by many in Irish sport who had clashed with him during his 27-year presidency. While he maintains his innocence and a case against him remains live in Brazil, the desperate need for change in the Olympic Council of Ireland is widely argued by many of those who deal with it.
If the anecdotal case for a new order is repeatedly stated, the dysfunction within the OCI was made palpable last October. In the tumultuous aftermath of Hickey’s arrest and his temporarily stepping aside as president, the council appointed a Crisis Management Sub Committee, comprising three members drawn from the executive committee.
They were Keane, Ciarán Ó Catháin, and Robert Norwood. That committee subsequently appointed consultants Deloitte to investigate the governance arrangements of the OCI.
The Deloitte report was leaked into the public in October. It described a lack of transparency within the OCI. It called for term limits on posi- tions within the Council, suggesting a maximum of two four-year terms.
‘There is strong evidence that organisations benefit from term limits: it prevents the dominance of one viewpoint or mode of thought, it is demonstrably fair to all, and it encourages a renewal and refreshment of governing body thinking and skills,’ it said.
As part of the report, the constituent federations of the Council were surveyed, and 96 per cent of respondents agreed with the idea of term limits.
Should O’Brien be elected president next month, he would fill the role up to the Tokyo Olympics, by which point he would have served 24 years as a member of the executive committee.
This would be three times the limit recommended by Deloitte (the report does say a third four-year term for an office holder could be permitted in exceptional circumstances, which were not expanded upon).
The absence of a strategic plan in which objectives of the OCI were laid out was also noted in the report, and ‘approximately 73 per cent of survey respondents disagreed that there is transparency within the OCI’.
It was a grim study of a closed organisation unfit or unwilling to adapt and change.
The credibility of the Deloitte report would be reduced to nothing were O’Brien to triumph and serve 24 years, given the strong emphasis it placed on term limits. Whatever credibility the OCI still clings to would be finished in those circumstances, too.
The Deloitte study was one of three launched after the Rio drama. A non-statutory State inquiry, under former High Court Judge Carroll Moran, is charged with investigating, among other matters, the distribution of tickets at the Rio Olympic Games.
It was hoped that report would be completed before Christmas, but is not now expected before Easter.
A third inquiry was set up by the OCI, under Grant Thornton, another set of consultants. Its work was halted in November after Hickey’s legal representatives’ threatened an injunction if it continued. In a statement, Hickey’s family defended their action, stating they acted to protect Hickey’s ‘constitutional rights, fair procedures and an entitlement to a fair trial’.
O’Byrne is considered the outsider in the presidential election, but he argues he is an outsider of a different sort. In material sent to all of the federations under the OCI, he claims: ‘Both of the other candidates for this position belong to the old guard of OCI’. Keane, the Swim Ireland chief executive, has been on the council’s executive committee for two years but her champions say she is an agent for change, as evidenced in her work on the crisis management committee.
O’Brien fits the old guard classification, how-
A GRIM STUDY OF A CLOSED ORGANISATION NOT WILLING TO ADAPT
ever. He has been acting president since Hickey vacated it and is a long-time ally of the departing president.
Sources say he has a chance of succeeding his old friend. In his pitch to voters ahead of next month, O’Brien stresses his experience and states twice that, if elected, this will be his final term of office. Regarding the Deloitte report, he pledges to work with the new execmany utive committee on implementing its 25 recommendations.
This is only after he takes issue with one aspect of the report’s preparation. ‘It should be noted that, during the course of the Deloitte review, on no occasion did they visit the offices of the Olympic Council (their first experience being to present the draft report to the Executive Committee) or complete any onsite reviews or examinations of practices,’ he claims.
If a mood for a new era is detectable among who work in Irish sport, apathy could play a role in this election.
Twenty-three of the OCI’s federations completed the online survey sent to them by Deloitte as part of its review.
That means 11, or almost one-third, did not, and this was at a time when the OCI and how it conducted itself was leading news headlines, not to mind the sports pages.
Sport Ireland remains avowedly agnostic on the election issue, but there were years of testy relationships with the OCI. The feeling is it would welcome change. The Government would too, but this is in the gift of the sporting bodies.
The 34 federations are entitled to vote, plus the remaining members of the executive committee (Ó Catháin, John Delaney and Kevin Kilty have all resigned, and Sonia O’Sullivan is not standing again). That leaves a probable electorate of 42.
The election is first past the post, so 15 votes could win it. With abstentions, it could be less, but sources suggest the figure will be higher, with O’Byrne not fancied to feature in the reckoning. If that is the case, the desire for change and the ability to canvass and secure dithering votes will decide it.
‘If you ask me how many votes I have in the bag or whatever, I haven’t honestly got a clue,’ says O’Byrne (attempts were made to contact Keane for this article). ‘By the nature of it, people will say, “I need to go back to my committee or I need to think, to compare the three proposals”.
‘That’s fine with me. All I want to do is to make sure they’re clear about what I would do and what I stand for, and after that it’s up to them. Whatever will be, will be.’
Keane is the favourite, the reformers’ best hope but also a relatively new presence in a theatre of battle where blazers’ rules apply.
On the website of the OCI this week, profiles of its executive committee still include one of Hickey as president. O’Brien’s biography includes the detail that he is ‘currently a member of the 2008 Olympic Performance Planning Committee’.
The sense has been for weeks that time is catching up on an organisation unfit to discharge its duties competently, one incidental to the fortunes of athletes.
Don’t be too sure. Change seems inevitable to the outside world. The OCI is not like the outside world.