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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: ccc president

  • CCC’s New President, Jamie Coatsworth Talks Business and the Board’s Role

    A Toronto businessman for the last 30-plus years, Jamie Coatsworth had spent enough time in meetings that sitting on a board wasn’t high on his post-retirement ‘to-do’ list. Helping not-for-profits was, and upon offering his services to Cross Country Canada (CCC) when he retired three years ago — working with executive director Davin MacIntosh on a non-taxable trust for national-team athletes — Coatsworth suddenly found himself interested in joining its board.

    MacIntosh had urged him to do so, Coatsworth explained on the phone Thursday from Toronto.

    “He said, where we really need help with your kind of background is on the board,” recalled Coatsworth, a commerce-and-consultant specialist who spent 29 years as a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world’s second-largest professional services network. “I said OK. I hadn’t been looking for board position. I was more into not-for-profit and project work.”

    But in 2012, CCC’s nominating committee approved Coatsworth’s candidacy for director and he was subsequently elected to the organization’s nine-person board of directors.

    Two years later, he’s the president.

    Coatsworth explained his rise to chair/president of the board materialized over the last couple weeks and was far from preplanned. The board sensed that former president Richard Lemoine would resign from his position rather than be re-considered for another two-year term. Coatsworth said he looked around the room and spoke with fellow board members about who might step up to fill the volunteer role.

    Nobody raised their hand, so he said he’d do it, Coatsworth explained. Recommended by the divisional chairs from CCC’s participating provinces and territories, his bid for president was supported by the board and officially approved last Saturday at the Annual General Meeting in Canmore, Alberta. While acting chair Jim McCarthy filled in for the last few weeks, Coatsworth’s two-year presidency went into effect immediately on June 14. There was no need for a vote, Coatsworth said, because the position was open.

    “Looking at my professional background, I think I could do a pretty good job,” he said.

    A recreational skier with a longstanding interest in the sport and Canada’s top athletes, Coatsworth has privately sponsored a number of Canadian skiers since after the 2002 Olympics, starting with the second-ranked skier on the team: Sara Renner (he figured No. 1 Beckie Scott was well enough off after earning gold in Salt Lake).

    Rather than give what he considered “at the time, a fairly modest amount of money” to an organization alone, he figured it would be better spent directly going to the athletes. He called up CCC in 2002 to figure out how to do just that and has been financially supporting athletes ever since.

    Coatsworth currently sponsors World Cup Team members Devon Kershaw and Lenny Valjas, and also backed the now-retired Dasha Gaiazova and Chandra Crawford’s Fast and Female enterprise. While some athletes might mention his name on their websites, Coatsworth said he was never “looking to broadcast it too widely. All these kids could use a hand.”

    He also gives money to Cross Country Canada “as I always have,” he explained. “I give some money to a couple of other clubs that have racing teams — Hardwood Hills, where my wife and I ski. I give some money to them a couple of other clubs, plus some athletes, a couple on the World Cup Team, several athletes on the [Alberta World Cup] Academy, and a couple people that are not on either [the national team or training centres].”

    While his support of athletes is widespread, he said his personal sponsorships aren’t major dollars. Still, the gesture has helped connect him with CCC’s developing and elite skiers.

    “Through these sponsorships I’ve gotten to know [certain athletes], gotten to enjoy them, follow their racing … kind of cheerlead,” he added. “Next thing you know I’m on the board and next thing, I’m chair.”

    Before joining the board in 2012, Coatsworth specifically asked MacIntosh if his sponsorships might be a conflict of interest. MacIntosh said no, because the board is not involved in day-to-day management of the national team, or decisions like team selections or carding.

    Coatsworth explained that he plans to be “quite vocal” about his personal sponsorships and steer clear of anything that might be a potential conflict. As chair, he is automatically on the high-performance committee, which selects national-team athletes at the end of the season, for example, but Coatsworth said he’ll “absolutely refuse myself from any decisions there.”

    Aside from appointing Coatsworth, the board elected two new directors to the board — Dorothy Lothian and Jennifer Tomlinson — to replace outgoing members Mike Norton and Rhonda Jewett.

    Asked about his relationship with MacIntosh, which Lemoine cited as a primary source of tension in his two years as president, Coatsworth said it was good — “I’ve got a lot of respect for him,” he said.

    At the same time, he pointed out he’s “not quite 30 years older” than MacIntosh, so his advice isn’t exactly fatherly, but it does come with years of business experience, specifically with company management restructuring.

    “One of the things we’ll be a little more rigid about it going forward is sticking to our governance role of management,” Coatsworth said of the CCC board. “Our job as the board is to set policies and hire a [CEO] to run the business.”

    In that sense, he said it’s up to MacIntosh to take actions where appropriate — and when it’s not appropriate, make the call to ask the board to weigh in.

    Leading a policy governed board during the start of an Olympic cycle, when a “big chunk” of funding is determined by how the government views a sports entity’s medal potential, may not be the easiest thing to jump into — especially after Canada’s cross-country skiers failed to medal at the 2014 Sochi Games. But that’s where Coatsworth’s expertise as a previous member  of CCC’s finance and marketing-fundraising committees might come in.

    “Our funding from Own The Podium (OTP) for able-bodied has been cut back a bit,” Coatsworth said. “You scale back on some things.”

    At the same time, OTP’s funding is more or less a lump sum intended for athletes’ training and competition expenses. With Gaiazova and Crawford retired from the World Cup Team and Perianne Jones now on the development team, Coatsworth said the number of World Cup athletes has gone from seven to four, which lessens the blow of reduced funds for those athletes.

    “I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal — it’s not like we don’t have the resources to do what we want to do,” he said. “It’s no real surprise frankly, and we’ve still got sufficient funding to do what we want to do for athletes who are going to be challenging for World Championships.”

    Perhaps CCC’s biggest challenge is filling out its World Cup Team with up-and-coming talent that can be competitive in Europe.

    “We’ve got a lot of talented athletes below the World Cup Team,” Coatsworth observed. “How do we get them the experience, the coaching … so that in South Korea [at the 2018 Olympics] it’s not just people like Alex Harvey who are competitive? … How do we get those people up a level? That’s the big challenge going forward.”

    Most recently, Coatsworth was president of an insurance-consulting business called Nordic Insurance — pure coincidence, he said of the name. He did not insure nordic skiers.

    “That company was named and formed before I got involved with any sponsorship of athletes,” he said of the business, which involved his consulting arrangement with PwC. “Going back to my squash-playing days, I had a nickname: the Nordic Butcher.”

    Why? “Blond hair flailing around the squash pit,” he said.

    Appointed president on Saturday, Coatsworth flew from Canmore to Toronto on Tuesday. He usually makes the trip west to CCC’s headquarters three times a year for meetings and said it’s “to be determined” what kind of travel and time commitment his position as chair requires.

    In the past, both Lemoine and MacIntosh worked closely with the Canadian Snowsports Organization, Canadian Olympic Committee and International Ski Federation (FIS), for example.

    “Richard had a much deeper background in ski racing than me,” he said of Lemoine’s race organization and timing experience, as well as years serving Cross Country Ontario. “I’m a recreational skier so I don’t have that background or that knowledge to the extent that the chair should be to be involved …  It may well be [appropriate] for somebody else on our board to be sitting on those committees.”

    Coatsworth said someone like Al Pilcher, a two-time Olympic nordic skier (in ’88 and ’92) who’s more familiar with these organizations, might be a better fit.

    “I spoke with Davin MacIntosh and I said, you tell me where you need me and I’ll be there,” he said. And if he’s not the right person, he’ll seek out another board member.

    “It’s a challenge for all of us,” Coatsworth said. “Whether it’s somebody new in the position … there are lots of things that need to be done, lots of decisions that need to be made. We’ve already gone to Davin said here are the challenges and issues as we see them. We want to see what your plan is dealing with these.”

    From there, the board will determine how they can support their CCC team.

    “When you get a change like this you have to say … what do we need to change,” he added. “We’ve got lots of people with different backgrounds that can help with these things and we’ll do that.”

  • Cross Country Canada’s President Richard Lemoine Resigns, Elections This Weekend: ‘I Was Asked Not to Run’

    Cross Country Canada’s President Richard Lemoine Resigns, Elections This Weekend: ‘I Was Asked Not to Run’

    Former CCC President Richard Lemoine (Photo: Richard Lemoine/LinkedIn)
    CCC President Richard Lemoine stepped down from his volunteer position on the Board of Directors two weeks ago. (Photo: LinkedIn)

    After this weekend, there’s going to be a new president/chairman of Cross Country Canada’s Board of Directors after Richard Lemoine stepped down from the volunteer position a few weeks ago.

    “I was asked not to run,” Lemoine explained on the phone Tuesday from Mississauga, Ontario, where he works as a partner with the chartered accounting firm, Lemoine Hyland LLP.

    Acting chair Jim McCarthy, Lemoine’s predecessor who served four consecutive years (two terms) as CCC president/chair from 2008 until 2012, said on the phone Tuesday that Lemoine’s resignation was “not really anticipated, but it happened.”

    “There was a difference of opinions as to how CCC should move forward and he felt he didn’t want to continue under those circumstances,” McCarthy added.

    President of the board since 2012, Lemoine said he chose to resign rather than not be reelected for a second term by CCC’s division chairs and board members at their Annual General Meeting (AGM), an open board meeting, this weekend in Canmore, Alberta. He’ll be in attendance, however, but will no longer hold a position on the board.

    “It really came down to where the board should have influence,” Lemoine said. “We’re a policy board and the model … some people think we should be running under is the Carver model, which has been described as nose in, fingers off.”

    He explained that this system, also known as policy governance, as “something that’s loved by executive directors, but I believe at the end of the day the board is going to be held accountable so they should be more knowledgeable and involved in the day-to-day process.”

    Accountability arrived front and center after the Sochi Olympics, a time in which CCC’s decision makers looked at their athletes’ results and lack of medals and decided it was time for change. In April, CCC hired Tor-Arne Hetland, a Norwegian Olympic gold medalist and former Swiss sprint coach, to help head up its World Cup Team.

    Lemoine said he advocated developing a stronger, domestic-coaching model, while acknowledging there were two sides to any decision and adding, “It’s not a decision for the board to take, but from a policy point of view, we need to make sure that we are preparing our domestic coaches for the top coaching positions.”

    But he and CCC’s Executive Director Davin MacIntosh often did not see eye to eye, Lemoine said.

    MacIntosh wrote in an email that he declined to comment.

    “There have been a number of areas of tension between Davin and I,” Lemoine said. “He was not pleased when I was proclaimed president.”

    There was a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes policy decisions — which the board should oversee — and operations decisions— which the executive director is responsible for, he explained.

    “Certainly post-Sochi I didn’t think the hard questions were being asked,” he added. “For example, I look at what the U.S. has been able to do over the last four years, converting athletes to the World Cup… and I look at that and say we could do better.”

    Yes, Canada’s seen unprecedented success in recent years, Lemoine said, but the nation’s athlete-feeder pipeline is dwindling.

    “We came out of our high-performance meeting this April not being able to fill our spots for training centres and having to decide to stop supporting the Callaghan Valley Training Centre as there weren’t enough athletes to go around,” he said. “Certainly the depth of talent is not what we want it to be … We are generally seeing a drop in retention rates of our athletes once they graduate from high school.”

    He pushed for Canada to fill its World Cup quota and bring the next tier of the best domestic racers over to Europe. With that comes costs, and likely struggles, but Lemoine pointed out that’s how Canada’s Olympic gold medalist Beckie Scott got her start — getting crushed by the competition.

    “You send them to Europe, you support them right, give them the best chances you can, and they see what the difference is,” Lemoine said. “We know our skiers are skiing slower than their European counterparts.”

    When it came to hiring coaches or restructuring the staff, Lemoine said, “that’s definitely getting past to where the board should be.” But he did look at the athlete-development system on the whole, and ask what direction it was trending in.

    “In my opinion we had a horrible Olympics; seventeenth was our best finish,” he said. “So you then ask the question, I like to quote Einstein: [insanity is] if you do ‘the same thing over and over again and expect different results’… Don’t come back with the same team because something’s gotta change. That’s where our executive director thought I was crossing the line.”

    Two weeks ago, Lemoine said the provincial and territorial directors met to consider the situation before the AGM on June 14.

    “They sided with Davin and decided it would be best if I stepped down,” Lemoine said.

    While CCC presidents can run for back-to-back two year terms, McCarthy is the only one who has held the position for four years, Lemoine said. At the request of the provincial chairs, Lemoine agreed to step aside rather than stay at the helm until this coming Sunday, when he would have likely been officially voted out.

    “I know all  of these people; I am going to stay involved in the sport,” he said. “I’m going to be the chief of competition at this year’s trials races for World Juniors/U23 Championships. I would have nothing to gain other than saying it’s going to protect my reputation a little bit … the sport is more important. I learned a long time ago that it’s all about the athletes.”

    According to McCarthy, who served as CCC Ontario chair before becoming president in 2008, he’s known Lemoine for “a dozen years” and observed, “he’s a pretty strong-minded character, works hard, has his own vision of things.”

    “I would have nothing to gain other than saying it’s going to protect my reputation a little bit … the sport is more important. I learned a long time ago that it’s all about the athletes.” — Richard Lemoine, President/Chair of Cross Country Canada’s Board of Directors from 2012-2014

    “The two of us worked well together, but occasionally clashed and … that’s what Richard’s about — he’s made a big contribution,” McCarthy said. “Like all volunteer organizations, it depends inordinately on a relatively small number of volunteers that put out.”

    At the end of the day, however, and on what McCarthy called an ongoing basis, “the executive director is more important to the operations of CCC than the board chairman.”

    In the last few weeks since Lemoine resigned, McCarthy has been filling in as chair, but said he would not be up for another term as president. As of June 4, no candidates had been nominated for the position, but McCarthy said they could be chosen and subsequently elected this weekend. Candidates do not have to be current members of the nine-person board.

    Lemoine’s involvement with CCC dates back to more than a decade ago, where he remains treasurer of the CCC Ontario board. From 2003-2004, he served as a director-at-large under CCC’s former structure and chaired the marketing committee from 2003 until 2005. That year, the structure of the board changed, and Lemoine went on to run three times to be a director-at-large from 2006 to 2009. He didn’t win, but was ultimately appointed to the board after his third failure, he said.

    “Oddly after being rejected three times as a director at large, the same people acclaimed me as president,” he said. “Dave Rees who was also acclaimed as president in 2006 also failed to win a position as a director-at-large at a previous AGM.”

    McCarthy explained that the board is made up of nine people: a chairman, six directors-at-large, one director representing the chairs of the provincial and territorial divisions, and an athlete director, “preferably an active athlete who tries to represent that perspective.” The divisions meet once a year, and the board meets three times annually, including at the AGM. They also check in via monthly phone meetings.

    The board hires and oversees an executive director who’s responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization. The executive director reports to the board “usually by monthly meetings, usually by telephone,” McCarthy said. MacIntosh was hired by CCC in 2009 and will retain his position in the immediate future, McCarthy said.

    Asked about the level of stress within the organization the last few months since the start of a new Olympic cycle, McCarthy said, “I’d say it’s pretty close to the same level of stress [as usual]. Everybody in this business is pretty passionate. People develop strong viewpoints of how things should be done.”