Night and Fog Action
Since then it has been shown that Schormann’s small pentathlon association can hardly cope with the big spotlight. It is not only dawning on the athletes that their association only gives itself a democratic tinge and that its president, who likes to be jovial, is actually more of a kind Charles Bronson of the pentathlon. Motto: I am the law.
In a cloak-and-dagger operation last autumn, Schormann had the decision made that made him the enemy of many of his own athletes: he decided with his board of directors to exchange equestrian sport for another fifth discipline. Earlier this month, he announced that it would be the obstacle course, a cross between army drill camp and 1970s Games Without Borders.
Was the group of experts assembled to choose the new fifth discipline just a cover? As early as 2015, Schormann boasted: “I’ve always been able to assert myself quite well in my executive for 23 years, that people follow what I came up with, because all things grew in my head.”
Appearance of an alibi commission
For the investigation of the new fifth discipline, the UIPM had made a separate item available in its annual budget (more than 4 million dollars for 2022), an impressive sum. But several weeks before the full composition of the responsible discipline search group was announced at the end of 2021, Schormann sounded to the sports show: He had already found a discipline. Only which ones, said Schormann, “I won’t tell you now”.
The timing of the attacks and revelations is extremely unfavorable for the roly-poly Schormann, whose sport has been predicted to be out of the Olympics several times over the past few decades. And it is certainly one of Schormann’s merits that it did not come to that. So far.
On a drip from the IOC
Alone: The President is currently being pinched with his leadership. The athletes rebel on the one hand. The International Olympic Committee puts him under heavy pressure from the other to organize his sport cheaper and more compatible for media consumption. Only then should the pentathlon also be in Los Angeles 2028 and thereafter are part of the Olympic program.
The sport depends on the drip I.O.C, because with just under 13 million euros, the Lords of the Rings donate almost 80 percent of the four-year budget of the UIPM. They will be dropped if the sport is no longer performed at the games. Quite openly, the IOC let it be known what it expects: riding has to go.
intimidation of athletes
So it is rather unfortunate that many of the tricks and tricks that Schormann has used to stay in power for almost 30 years are now being revealed. He himself never tires of emphasizing that the number of member associations has more than doubled under his presidency. This was necessary in order to fool the IOC into thinking that it was universal. In fact, many of the newly admitted associations from Africa or Asia have no pentathletes at all – but they do have full voting rights.
Schormann had his association ensure that they could do this: a few years ago, the UIPM promised to cover the delegates’ travel expenses to the congress, and recently they even waived the fee for 90 percent of the African associations, the payment of which is a prerequisite for the right to vote at the congress is. “If you then think about whether that leads to gratitude and whether you cast your vote as desired, then of course that’s problematic“, says Benny Elmann-Larsen, the association president of Denmark.
Vice-President Vyacheslav Aminov is one of those who protects Schormann’s interests in the world association. The Russian oligarch has excellent connections in the highest Kremlin circles and sits on the board of the army club CSKA. Even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Aminov remains firmly in the saddle in the UIPM, while Russian and Belarusian athletes have been excluded.