(ATR) A year ago Patrick Hickey was one of the most influential figures in the Olympic Movement.
IOC member in Ireland. President of the Olympic Council of Ireland. President of the European Olympic Committees. Member of the IOC Executive Board.
It was a web of leadership that was ripped apart instantly around 6 a.m. August 17, 2016. Surrounded by TV cameras, Brazilian police knocked on the door to Hickey’s room at the IOC hotel, arresting him on suspicion of breaking Brazilian laws on the sale of tickets to the Olympics. Dressed in a bathrobe, it was an ignominious moment that signaled the sudden end of Hickey’s prestige and influence.
Incarcerated for weeks, he missed the end of the Olympics, leaving his wife stranded, with spouses of IOC members coming to her aid.
Within days of his arrest, Hickey self-suspended his Olympic leadership titles. Some, like the presidencies of the OCI and EOC will never return, with others taking those seats. A new president has been elected for the Olympic Council of Ireland, in November a new president of the European Olympic Committees will be chosen. That will certainly trigger the demise of his vice presidency of the Association of National Olympic Committees and the IOC EB slot tied to that ANOC post.
His IOC membership remains in abeyance. But to have any hope of being accepted back into the fold of the IOC, Hickey may need positive resolution of the criminal charges he faces in Rio. A trial could still be many months away. He is still obligated to ANOC for the $400,000 it supplied to secure his release from Brazil.
Keeping to a low profile, Hickey has not been seen at any of the events that have marked the Olympics calendar since he was allowed to leave Brazil last December. Earlier this year Hickey was in Baku for the opening of the Islamic Solidarity Games where he was the guest of the President of Azerbaijan. Hickey was a driving force in bringing the first edition of the European Games to Baku in 2015.
He has given one interview since returning to Ireland, speaking to journalist Paul Williams on Dublin radio in June.
"I was portrayed as some sort of a world-class criminal that I was in some mafiosa conspiracy or something like that," Hickey said in his defense.
Earlier this week, a state-commissionedreport on the ticketing practices of the OCI ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympics raised concerns, but said no laws were broken.
Hickey, in a statement, said he was "pleased to see my reputation and good name have been cleared" by the report. However, he said that the entire endeavor was "ill-conceived" given his inability to respond to questions from investigators. He declined to cooperate with the inquiry, claiming if he did it could interfere with his ongoing trial in Brazil.
Irish Sports Minister Shane Ross on Friday told Irish media that he would be forwarding a copy of the report to the IOC's ethics body, led by former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as to IOC President Thomas Bach.
In the meantime, Ross says that state funding to the OCI will continue to be withheld until the organization gets its house in order in the aftermath of the Hickey situation.
The OCI has already lost about 500,000 Euros ($587,620) in funding since last year, according to the Irish Times.
Written by Ed Hulaand Gerard Farek.
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