Letter to NIF v/ sports council

Lack of trust in show organizers and Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen as lead

In accordance with the Athletes Committee Statute adopted by the Sports Council on 30 March 2017 pursuant to the NIF Act § 4–4 k), cf. § 4–6 (1), the sports council is responsible for the formation and functioning of the athletes’ committee.

The athletes’ committee should represent the interests and views of elite athletes who play the sport organized by the organizational relations in the Norwegian Sports Confederation and the Olympic and Paralympic Committee (NIF), and inter alia advise the NIF and safeguard the interests of elite athletes in sport policy.

As a result of the ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine, this winter the sports committee has taken up questions regarding the participation of Russia and Belarus in international sports. This case exposed a number of serious flaws in the practice of Norwegian democracy.

The athletes’ committee is currently not fulfilling its mandate and committee chairman Uhrenholdt Jacobsen is in a dual role that compromises his legitimacy and independence as a representative of the interests of the Norwegian athlete.

The Athlete Committee has failed to promote the viewpoint of Norwegian athlete sport policy, and Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen as leader has worked across the interests of athletes.

The chair of the athletes’ committee has been summoned to several dialogue meetings on the topic under the auspices of the IOC. At the first meet in January, he disclosed, reproduced on NRK (29.01.23), on behalf of the Norwegian athletes that:

“In our opinion, non-discrimination is not invariable. Our mission will continue to be a unifying force, and it must remain our focus. This means that no athlete should be excluded simply because of his or her passport. And, we hope that the fellow athlete committee will unite on our values. Then, secondly, we can discuss with him any practical needs that need to be done to enable all athletes to return to the field of play.”

Jacobsen has no evidence to say this on behalf of the Norwegian athlete. He had been repeatedly called upon to conduct surveys to survey the Norwegian athletes’ true opinion on the matter, and this work took too long before it began.

Meanwhile, Norwegian athletes are deprived of the opportunity to speak out in ongoing proceedings – both at the IOC and in Norwegian sports work on the matter.

Jacobsen resolutely emphasized to the masses of athletes in two joint meetings that there is no need to rush to get the athletes’ opinion, although it needs to be emphasized among others by the undersigned. At the same time, he issued a protocol in the Sports Council decision on the matter on 02.02.23 and later wrote:

“The Athlete Committee follows an ongoing process within the international sporting movement. When this has been completed, we will take a position through a wide survey among the top Norwegian players.”

The provisions of the protocol stand in stark contrast to the message he expressed to the masses of artists, in which he claimed that there was no need to take a direct position and at the same time assured that we should not wait for the process to be completed, but instead should be heard along the way.

When the athlete survey was finally conducted, it showed that Norwegian athletes supported continued bans on Russian and Belarusian athletes, and that they believed having a process to look into possible reintroductions now was wrong. The athletes also want the athletes’ committee to take an active position in the ongoing process with the IOC.

It was not possible for us as practitioners to get more information about the answers because Uhrenholdt Jacobsen would not give us access to our own poll results. However, this did not prevent him in the last dialogue meeting with the IOC from expressing precisely the opinion of the Norwegian athletes, and as he himself put it in the athletes’ WhatsApp group, choosing to “represents simple numbers from our survey, without subjective treatment.”

Uhrenholdt Jacobsen promised that Norwegian practitioners would be involved and heard in the formal process, and the ongoing dialogue meetings would only be informal. He urged us to trust the international organization and to trust the process and its control over it, justifying this by the fact that he had very good contacts with the IOC.

This turned out to be a bad strategy when the IOC Executive Committee on 29.03.23 ended the dialogue process by recommending a list of principles of neutrality to include athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports in international sports, without ever formally placing the position of a Norwegian athlete. forward in the relevant athlete forums. The Athlete Committee also never made any decisions about what they should think on behalf of the Norwegian athletes.

Through the sit-and-wait strategy of managers, athletes have missed the opportunity to be heard on issues that matter so much to so many people, and which relate to core sporting values ​​such as integrity and fair play. Not only have we lost the opportunity to be heard for our position, but the leader has used his platform to advocate for the opposite stance of the majority of athletes, both in meetings with the IOC and the sports council.

He also failed to correct this after being informed of the opinions of the athletes. This is completely unacceptable, and a breach of trust against the Norwegian athletes.

IOC members cannot act as democratic leaders of Norwegian athletes

Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen sits on the Norwegian athletes’ committee due to being a member of the IOC’s athletes’ committee. In other words, her position is rooted in the IOC, and she answers “home” to the IOC, not the Norwegian athletes. When you join as a member of the IOC, you are required, in accordance with the Olympic Charter, points 16, 1.3, paragraph 7, to take an oath:

“I pledge to fight against all forms of discrimination and to dedicate myself under all circumstances to promoting the interests of the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Movement.»

In other words, as part of his international role, he has an obligation to be loyal to the interests and perspectives of the IOC. Despite the fact that he is chairman of the Norwegian athletes’ committee, he has vowed to promote the interests of the IOC under all circumstances. This is inconsistent with the Athletes Committee statutes and their mandate to represent the views and interests of Norwegian athletes.

In a case where the interests of the Norwegian athlete and those of the IOC diverge, in other words, he or she will not be able to represent both positions with integrity.

The athlete committee leader sat in a dual role as an IOC member, and the Norwegian athlete’s primary voice was compromised. This dual role may explain his failure to represent the interests of Norwegian athletes in the ongoing case.

The dual roles also contribute to undermining confidence in the athlete committee leader and opening up unnecessary and inappropriate speculation of motives, as well as undermining confidence in one’s own organizational unit. Athletes must be sure that their highest representative in matters of sports policy really represents the athlete, and not the body we are supposed to represent.

Upcoming process

12.03.23 Uhrenholdt Jacobsen stated in the Athletes group on WhatsApp that there will be an Athlete Committee election in the near future. Even though the special association had been notified of the election in mid-December, and the election was planned to be held during the spring, he was able to announce that a new athlete committee would be appointed first. after sports council in June. He justified this by saying that the current athletes’ committee should “deliver to the sports council”.

Athletes elected to the Athletes Committee are accountable to the athletes who selected them, not the Norwegian Sports Council. Therefore, not an independent argument that they should address the problem. On the contrary, it deprives our next representatives of input and influence in future sports policy. Our representatives must be elected long before the sports council and placed in a position to sit down and contribute as soon as they are elected.

Norway’s athlete democracy is weakened, and is in an unsustainable situation where our viewpoints and interests are not protected in accordance with the law. As a responsible body, I urge the Sports Council to address this situation and clear it up immediately.