The voice of concern about Phillip and Bobby being left off the short list started with Boyd’s and Jennie’s blog over the weekend and it has escalated to comments from Phillip himself. In an interview with Kat Netzler of the Chronicle this morning, Phillip explained his surprise and concerns:
“Obviously I’m pretty shocked and surprised, not so much that we didn’t get the job, but that we didn’t get the chance for the riders to hear our proposal and our plans and our vision for the team. That’s disappointing…
I think it’ll be interesting to see whether the riders accept the first committee’s recommendation to interview the two. I believe that at the end of the day, the [Eventing Eligible] Athletes Committee is in charge of the hiring of the coach…
I think the whole process seems a bit flawed in that it was constantly made clear and bragged about that the riders would get to choose their next coach. Well, they’re only getting to choose between two, and there were nine applicants. So it’s not really a true representation of everybody there.“
Read the full interview here.
Two important details are that the Athletes Committee does not have to accept the recommendation of the Search Committee, but, like the search committee, the Athletes Committee doesn’t have any more power than to make a recommendation. Their recommendation will be passed on to the High Performance Committee which will then pass a recommendation to USEF CEO John Long. The coach will be a USEF employee which means that John Long will make the ultimate hiring decision.
Go eventing.
