President’s Blog.
22 December 2022
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas …
When we turn on the radio or when we walk in city centres, it is becoming clear, Christmas and New Year are approaching. As a result, time has come to reflect on the previous year. A year where we as a club have worked hard and have been able to accomplish many things.
We are very happy about the numerous webinars and the high attendance of these educational sessions, proving they really add value to all of us. Thank you for the active participation and thank you for your help to realise them.
We are very happy with our growing membership base. Thank you to our regional representatives and all members. Each and every one of you are and have been true ambassadors for our club.
We are very happy with the approval of the revised remuneration policy that is part of the 2023 FEI Jumping Rules. It is an important step in our pathway to professionalism for officials.
We are happy to have many entries for our IJOC Officials Forum in Lisbon mid-January. We are looking forward to meeting you again in person as these social aspects are also a great value of being part of this big “Officials Community’.
Almost at the end of my first year as President of our Club, I am delighted to have been able to work with a highly engaged and committed group of board members. Each of them really makes the difference and together we are all looking back at a great year. At the same time, we are looking forward to another great year to come.
We hope you enjoy the upcoming days and weeks as we approach the New Year. We would like to wish you already all the best for 2023. We hope we can work with all of you to continue our pathway and we really hope to see you in Lisbon.
Happy New Year!
Glenn Maes
President IJOC
15 July 2022
We need your help ! Working on the future
Dear colleagues officials,
As we are kicking off the summer period, we would like to highlight some key action points we have been working on as the board.
The past few months and weeks have been extremely busy as we have had numerous meetings, consultations and discussions on the remuneration of officials. You all know that the discussion has started back in 2019 and we are proud to announce that we have come to an agreement with the Equestrian Organisers on a joint proposal for the remuneration of officials at the FEI jumping events. This agreement was an important prerequisite from the FEI to support the proposal which we have accomplished.
In this proposal two principles are embedded :
- Remuneration will be different for those officials that are taking the lead during events and/or have an important reporting role/responsibility . Those roles are president of the ground jury, foreign judge, chief steward and foreign steward. On the other hand, we have the “operating officials” (ground jury members and stewards).
- Remuneration will be different depending on the level of the show (for combined events, the highest star level counts). .
These two principles are reflected in the following proposed grid.
This proposal is already included in the current FEI rule revision process . This means that all stakeholders (NF’s and organisations that have signed an MOU) are consulted about this proposal and can provide feedback. We hope you are all supporting this proposal and suggest convincing your NF to support us in providing positive feedback towards the FEI and support our proposal..
On the 5th of July, both Ali Kücük as Secretary General and myself have been visiting the FEI Headquarters. During our visit we also discussed this topic and FEI supports us in the vision that the current remunerations need to be modified. Of course, we want a common agreement with all stakeholders and therefore more consultation might be needed to make sure that everybody is on the same page.
As we had different meetings with FEI Secretary General Sabrina Ibanez, Jumping Director Marco Fusté, Director Education & Officials Frank Spadinger and Legal Director Mikael Rentsch, we have been able to start discussions on other topics like the education system, appointments and reporting activities during shows. We agreed we will be partnering together on proposals for these aspects as well.
Your input to strive for improvements are also more than welcome.
We need your help for the future of our officials !
Kind Regards,
Glenn Maes, President
8 March 2022
45 days ago at our yearly General Assembly, I was elected as the President of our Club. A big change in my personal world. Meanwhile, during these 45 days, our greater world has been changing a lot. Whilst we were noticing around the world strong improvements in the pandemic situation and we all started cheering our “new normal”, a new uncertainty has entered our lives. The situation in Eastern Europe is affecting the whole world now. In our thoughts we support the people who are impacted by this new big crisis. We are in direct contact with those from our club that are directly impacted, and we will support them wherever we can.
45 days after the election, it is time to reflect on our achievements and share plans about what we will be doing for our club.
The beginning was about getting organized. As you all know, Teodor stepped down as Secretary General as he moved into a new role within the European Equestrian Federation. Ali Kücük is taking over his responsibility with the support of Teodor who is still active as a board member. We had two board meetings where we outlined some short and mid-term action points to start with. Let me share some of the most important ones.
Remuneration
- I have been in touch with stakeholders and leaders within the FEI to discuss the need to have the FEI Officials’ remuneration reviewed. We have proposed a line of actions to tackle this important focus area and are happy to see that the problem is recognized and will be discussed this year.
Continental Associations
- We have been participating as an associate member in the European Equestrian Federation Roundtable to discuss strategically the future of our sport.
- We are looking into creating closer relationships with other Regional Federations (like Asian Federation and Pan American Equestrian Confederation)
FEI Feedback
- As a stakeholder we have provided the feedback we gathered about the Olympic Games
- We also reviewed the rule revision proposal we received and submitted them to the FEI
Education
- This is ever improving and increasing in quantity- IJOC Webinars. One of our main focus areas. As a result we had some good seminars and we are planning new ones. We will communicate shortly about our new initiatives
45 days is not that long, but it feels like we as a team accomplished a lot. Please reach out to us with proposals, ideas or thoughts that we as a club can focus on.
Not 45 days ago, but more than 47 years ago, on March the 8th, the United Nations celebrated for the first time International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day has been observed since the early 1900’s. Our sport is one of the very few that is completely gender-neutral and we should be proud of this. But please take some time today to think about the equal rights for men and women. Things we take for granted within our sport, are not always the case around the world. Let’s do whatever we can to work on this equality wherever and whenever.
Kind Regards,
Glenn Maes
President IJOC