Alexander Larin, Founder, “Idealist Media” Platform; General Secretary of the Federation of Basketball of Ukraine (2011-2015); Vice-Minister of Sport of Ukraine (2010)

 

The elections of new President of the National Olympic Committee – an NGO tasked with promoting the Olympic movement in Ukraine – have stirred up the debate over the much talked-about need for changes in the sport sector. However, an insight into the speeches and agendas of potential candidates for the office, as well as their managerial backgrounds don’t inspire hope that the advent of new faces to Ukraine’s NOC will bring about some transformations.

The Olympic Charter remains a fundamental document guiding the Olympic movement. It undergoes periodic adjustments but in essence it remains unchanged for more than 100 years. The word athlete can be found in it as few as 5 times, result – 6 times whereas the word principles is used 29 times and here is what it means. The Olympic movement is not just about who is going to win; it is about basic principles: what, why, how is something set up and how it is supposed to develop. One of the principal problems of Ukraine’s sport system is its dramatic inconsistency with the Olympic Charter and the fundamental pillars on which the Olympic system and the global sport system are built (absence of real tools for defending its autonomy and its members – federations). Unfortunately, the situation assessment and the key priorities as articulated by candidates make it clear that their understanding of the NOC functionality remains within the Soviet-times paradigm – the one that once underpinned the USSR’s NOC. Technically, its purpose was to demonstrate the adherence to Olympic standards with an eye on meeting the requirements to the 1952 Olympics participant.

As an illustration, I will cite a few examples which will most certainly ring the bell with the people engaged in the sport sector and having a hands-on experience in dealing with those processes. The NOC’s activity was predominantly focused on interaction with its membership, i.e. 99 percent of all the activity involved working with and/or via sports federations. The Olympic Charter mentions the government solely as an NOC’s counterpart with which common interests and support needs to be sought. What principles of the Olympic Charter can we talk about inasmuch as the NOC of Ukraine has, since Stalin era up until now, tolerated a different interaction pattern?

The Olympic Charter clearly states that national federations, acting in conjunction with the National Olympic Committee, nominate their team which the NOC then brings to the Olympics. This means that it is neither the ministry nor any other agency, but only the NOC and national sports federations that stand as non-governmental organisations set up and acting to clear rules. What exactly do we see as we look into the documents? It is the Ministry of Sport of Ukraine that approves the ultimate line-up of the national team and directs it to all sorts of competitions including the Olympics. It is the Ministry that approves coaches, forms the teams and appoints candidates.

More so, the Olympic Charter states that the national teams must include not only the ones featuring the best performance but also the athletes who are perceived as orienteers and moral authorities. At the same time, the document outlining the selection criteria and signed by the minister and the NOC president articulate only one criterion: best performance. What principles can we discuss in this light? 

Inconsistencies like the above are many. It is not about principles, it is about the stereotype attitude “that’s the way it works, these are the rules and who are we to change them?” Each sport federation is in a way a party of same-minded people committed to a certain sport. It is only natural if such a formation encourages the bottom-up initiative and nurtures leadership. The situation with multiple Ukrainian federations is totally different however. The country has no programmes, not even a vision of the development and enhancement of federations as transparent democratic institutions. This objective is out of scope of interest of the ministry and the NOC. There is an objective of providing support but it is only confined to material assistance to preparing the national teams, period. While having a status of NOGs, sport federations and the NOC itself are technically supervised by the Ministry of Sport. As long as the state document whereby the official delegation to the Olympics consisting of  coaches, athletes, medical staff bears a seal of the ministry and a signature of the minister, it becomes clear that the government not only directs these delegations but also controls them. And there can be no excuses explaining that such relations ensue from the financial system adopted in Ukraine. If there were somebody to raise this issue, a decision would have been found within the most of two hours. However, as the search for this decision is not on the agenda, all of the counterparts – the NOC and the government represented by the ministry – continue to exist in the Soviet paradigm which in turn lingers on and flourishes.

Federations are stuck in the same trap. Returning to an issue of forming and directing the delegations to the Olympics: as long as the ministry has all the financial levers and influence on athletes, it remains in a position to steer the process which often allows it to dictate its will to federations, to impose coaches candidacies or to force them to employ the people it wants. This is a sad reality of today and way too often federations fail to resist.

The public debate and claims made by candidates for the NOC presidency pledging changes or improvements of the situation reveal a deplorable picture: being inside the situation, they lack understanding of this situation. They do not take a critical look upon the model as a whole; instead, they move forward some technical solutions of individual problems pertinent of this model. Nor do they endeavour to look for personalities capable of offering a different take on the problem. Claims like "athletes deserve being care of” or “funding must be distributed in a fair way” do not belong to the NOC’s jurisdiction, it has nothing to do with its function at all! The question of who will distribute funding in a more fair or expedient way can only serve the goal of discomfort minimization but is quite far from addressing the problem. We carry on redecorating a house instead of radically transforming its architecture.

The situation we observe is very similar to the one when a doctors gathering aims to treat a patient without establishing his or her diagnosis. A Viagra pill will barely help someone suffering from flat foot as well as applying gypsum will not help eyesight correction. What is necessary at this stage is revisiting the whole concept of the organisational models and toolbox the current sport system exists with today. Inasmuch as we go on applying the Soviet approach we cannot expect achieving any different outcomes. Thus, this approach requires immediate reconsideration. And this is an exercise which may only be undertaken by people with a critical stance on the system. Notably, we are not talking about trade-offs inside the preserved paradigm, we are talking about the paradigm reformation in principle. Otherwise, all reform-focused initiatives will never yield any effects, it will be just wasting of efforts, time, human and material resources while the problem will remain unsolved. 

This being said, the very objective of Ukrainian sport system transformation will become exactly the catalyst of these changes – to the extent that this objective is part of the agenda of the key decision makers in the country. If however this agenda is only confined to an issue of changing those who represent Ukraine at the global arena, all the transformation-related debates don’t make any sense whatsoever.