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Since I stopped reporting on Australian equestrian sport quite some time ago, for a number of reasons that I don’t intend on elaborating on, I have refrained from commenting on the current chaotic state of Equestrian Australia. However over the last few days, a number of people have contacted me asking what I think should happen.<\/p>\n
I certainly did not attempt to follow the Days of Our Lives soap opera farce that has been particularly the Federal EA, but also the (un)reality in some of the state branches, so these general observations are more based on about 30 years of watching equestrian develop in Australia.<\/p>\n
I saw a post from Barry Roycroft where he pointed out that the rot had set in when it was decided (by whom?) that directors who knew nothing about the sport might better guide EA than the traditional directors who had been drawn from the ranks of competitors, owners and event organizers. It was a costly delusion. I met a couple of these outside experts, perfectly charming folk, but their solutions were simply an attempt to mirror strategies that worked very well for sports like tennis or golf, but were completely useless for a minority interest sport like equestrian.<\/p>\n
This was compounded by employing a series of General Secretaries who also knew nothing about the sport, who in turn employed large numbers of Federal functionaries who also knew nothing about the sport. It really looked like one big circular con. The various tertiary bodies spew out x sports administrators a year. Half of them go to work for the various sporting bodies, while the other half go to work for the funding bodies. So while the Institute of Sport and the Olympic Committee were handing out more money than ever before, the riders were getting less. The funds were absorbed by the small army of bureaucrats employed by EA to write reports, after as many seminar talk fests as possible, to go to their mates in the funding bodies, so they could get another round of grants, so they… Nice work if you can get it…<\/p>\n
The series of non-equestrian Secretaries General were much more comfortable with irrelevant educational programs – think of the absurd ready set go campaign – than getting involved in the nitty gritty of getting Australian teams to compete on the world stage in the best possible shape. How many EA functionaries does it take to write a one paragraph press release? For a while the answer was three! Flown around Australia to major events, along with a cricket team of ‘expert’ advisors and selectors. And it was worse at major international events.<\/p>\n
Here is my modest proposal. Take the Federal body back to its original charter, to facilitate international competition, and let’s remember in the process, that the elite athletes, like Christopher Burton or Andrew Hoy or Stuart Tinney, really don’t need a high performance program, they set their own goals. Yes, you do need someone with serious international experience to shape the tactics on the day, a r\u00f4le that Wayne Roycroft filled with spectacular, count them three gold medals, success, but these people can be hired in the final stages of a selection process, they are not the sort who wish to prop up a desk in an EA office.<\/p>\n
Take the feds back to that minimal r\u00f4le and you can sack all the hangers on, all you need is a Secretary General who comes out of the sport, with a secretary\/office manager. Leave all the other stuff for the state branches, while making sure that the state branches are answerable to their membership, but that dear friends is another can of worms.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Ricky.jpg\")
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In the coming days, my advice to all who have asked it, has been to follow the lead of an elite competitor, exemplary character, and a fine mind who has spent a lifetime in the sport – Ricky MacMillan.<\/p>\n
– CH<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The EA is both broke and broken – Christopher Hector has a modest proposal to set the organization back on its intended path…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,1],"tags":[433,2052],"class_list":["post-53052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-uncategorized","tag-equestrian-australia","tag-shock-horror"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53052"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53056,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53052\/revisions\/53056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}