LawAccord Dominates First Day of SportAccord

(ATR) Great governance, greater leadership, gender equality and WADA backing its decision on Russia, were among the topics of the opening day of the SportAccord World Sport and Business Summit on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Former ICC and Australian Cricket Board boss Malcolm Speed on Monday set the scene for the challenge of "making good governance great" with his opening address on a day dominated by LawAccord.

Anti-Doping panelists also discussed ongoing challenges followed by a a chat with WADA president Craig Reedie.

Reedie, in his final term as WADA president, has enjoyed a career that's also included winning Badminton world championship gold, taking his beloved sport to the Olympics, and playing a huge part in helping London gain the 2012 Olympics.

He says his greatest challenge was without doubt managing the Russian doping scandal - "the biggest doping crisis in the history of sport" - and in particular the lead-in to the 2016 Rio Olympics.

He defended WADA’s decision in January to make the Russian Anti-Doping Agency compliant again.

"WADA is about the only organization that actually brought Russia to do what we wanted. They are now behaving extremely well," Reedie said.

Two of Reedie's finest moments came when he heard the IOC announce that Badminton would become an Olympic sport in 1992 in Barcelona and when Sebastian Coe said at the 2012 Closing Ceremony in London "when it was our turn..we did it right".

Speaking to a packed room of the world’s sporting administrators and sports lawyers, Malcolm Speed provided the introduction.

While praising the "Good Governance" principles set by Sport Australia, who had set the standard for sports around Australia he challenged international sports bosses to lift the bar and take their governance to a greater level as the world of sport grapples with challenges to reach the top of their game.

Speed noted Australian Sports Commission boss John Wylie’s assertion "While good governance does not guarantee success its absence almost certainly guarantees failure."

"Achieving good governance is hard enough," said Speed.

"Great governance (actually) covers the same terrain and it deals with the same issues and it has the same menu but it asks us to raise it to a much higher level.

"Using the framework and structure provided by good governance we seek to raise the governance performance of the organization to a much higher level to achieve greater outcomes and achieve the true potential of the sport.

"Each item on the menu has to be greater – like the people’s systems, policies, compliance, decision making and communication."

Speed also spoke about leadership and the qualities of great leadership, saying "great governance can not be achieved without great leaders" and quoting renowned writer and academic Peter Drucker, who said: "Only three things happen naturally in organizations, friction, confusion and underperformance – everything else requires leadership."

"The two most important features when choosing a great leader are great judgment and the ability to lead and inspire. Gender is irrelevant, age is irrelevant," Speed said.

"They need a sense of humor and an incredibly thick skin, while independent wealth is an optional extra."

Speed was followed by a panel "Good Governance" experts – including Maria Clarke (NZL), who worked on the IAAF Governance Structure Reform and Francois Carrard – a senior partner of a leading Swiss Law Firm who served as the Director General of the IOC between 1989 and 2003 – and the longest serving expert on sport governance.

Clarke spoke of her at times difficult role within the IAAF reform team, an organization which has undergone huge reform since 2015, when there was a Council of 27 (President; four vice presidents (one female); treasurer; six area vice presidents; 15 individual members (five of whom were female) and an executive board of five.

Four years later, the Council consists of the President, four Vice Presidents (two of each gender by 2027); six area presidents; two athlete commission members; 13 individual members (50 percent of each gender by 2027) and an executive board of nine (President, four vice presidents; three appointed directors and a non-voting CEO).

Clarke says British athletics great Sebastian Coe, as IAAF president, has lead the sport from the front, with continuing challenges.

"Sebastian Coe’s leadership is undeniably the reason this reform got through. He built the trust in what were very challenging situations; he is a huge believer in good governance enabling the sport to grow. Sebastian walked the talk."

Carrard, who has had a role in governance for 52 years in international sport, had the final say of the day in discussing gender equality.

"Every executive body should have an equal number of representatives of both gender," said Carrard.

"This is a very simple solution…I’m totally against quotas. If the numbers are uneven you can do with one more or one less; this must be an obligation.

"If you cannot fill these vacancies (with the right people)…leave the seats vacant…make (the boards) compulsory for the same number of (men and women)."

On the Anti-Doping Panel, Jacob Holmes, the General Secretary of the Australian Athletes Alliance and CEO of the Australian Basketballers Association, said it was time that Drugs In Sport Education had to adopt a "holistic education of the entire sports industry".

He said that the education processors were "obviously not working", adding educators have to do better than just saying "drugs are bad for you."

"They have to do better than that. There has to be re-education of athletes and of the rest of the (sports) work place, they have to be educated to say no," said Jacobs.

Written and reported by Ian Hanson at SportAccord in Gold Coast

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