The ongoing board meetings of the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne on Thursday and this morning in Riyadh, immediately before the 73rd UIPM Congress, were quite thrilling Game of Thrones: accompanied by a flurry of email traffic that is electrifying the small modern pentathlon family; written appeals not to vote for certain candidates, but instead to finally hold Klaus Schormann and other leaders to account; mutual allegations of corruption and election interference; and a brutal IOC letter that was distributed in order to eliminate one of the three presidential candidates.
Don't think this is about some small, unimportant Olympic IF. It is about principles – and the fall height is enormous.
As First Vice President of the UIPM acts a gentleman, who is closely associated with Schormann & Co, who is not contributing to any public clarification, but who now wants to become IOC President: Juan Antonio Samaranch, currently IOC Vice President.
What did Samaranch know, having served three decades as a senior UIPM official? Things are getting out of control, maybe even for Samaranch, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, of all places, where the UIPM monarch Schormann thought he could control and regulate everything, as always.
But what happened this time?
Yesterday, the German pensioner Klaus Schormann (78) tried in vain to persuade his colleagues on the Executive Board not only to grant him the HON presidency, but also an additional transition period, during which he would continue in office.
In the UIPM and elsewhere in sport, this is how it is supposed to be: you get elected, and the next day the new people take office. But then, what monarch is interested in statutes? L'État, c'est moi!
Schormann wanted to remain sole ruler until January 2025, after a number of other plans had not worked out: first Transition President, then HON President, or maybe both at the same time, or maybe, until 31 December, as they say, the actual, real UIPM President?
Insanity.
Even with his hoped-for future budget as HON President of $200,000, it didn't work out. Although Schormann reduced his demand to $150,000 during the board's debate in dire straits.
Suddenly resistance.
Treasurer John Helmick had only earmarked 25,000 USD for a possible HON President Schormann (whether it would come to that and how long it would last is now written in the stars) for 2025.
And the transition period? What a surprise, the colleagues did not want to follow Schormann by a majority. One line of argument went like this:
If we do that, there will be a big bang at the congress!
Transition period? You had never heard of such a term, dear reader? Have you already forgotten?
It is an invention of Thomas Bach, who came up with it in Paris in August, when he announced that he would not have the Olympic Charter changed after all and would continue as planned, but that a new IOC president would be elected in March 2025 – but only on June 24, 2025, acting alone.
Until 23 June, Olympic Day, Thomas Bach will somehow remain in office.
Jens Weinreich
And lo and behold, the example quickly caught on.
Marisol Casado, outgoing president of World Triathlon, granted herself a transition period of six months, alongside the new fake president Antonio Arimany (ICAS vice president) and after the obvious electoral fraud at the triathlon congress in October, for which Arimany was responsible.
Casado will remain interim president until after the IOC session in March and thus also an ex officio IOC member, so that she can vote at the IOC session as she is instructed.
Jens Weinreich
So now Klaus Schormann and his transition period.
According to eye and ear witnesses at the meetings in Riyadh, Schormann repeatedly claimed that his strange proposals and requests had been discussed with the IOC boss.
He said that Thomas Bach wanted it that way, and formulated it in similar terms several times.
Schormann even went so far as to claim that Bach wanted Schormann, as HON President, to receive a $200,000 budget.
It doesn't get any more absurd than that.
As if Bach interferes when an IF leader, shortly before his 9th decade still can't let go of office and who has almost only made bad headlines for the IOC and the Olympic Games in recent years, desperately fights for a budget almost until the end of his life.
Is this what Bach really wants, or was it perhaps Bach who earlier this year clarified with the IOC administration that Schormann should finally step down after 31 years – so that the modern pentathlon can remain an Olympic sport?
At this point, I will make it easy for you and refrain from bringing some other documents into play that strongly suggest that Bach and the IOC administration around Director General Christophe De Kepper are primarily concerned with keeping calm and ensuring that the person who has been considered the favourite to succeed Schormann for more than a decade, Frenchman Joël Bouzou, does not succeed Schormann under any circumstances.
