His name left the newspaper columns. But he will come back to it. Monday October 17 marks a dark anniversary for Patrick Hickey: two months to the day have passed since the arrest of the Irish leader in his hotel room in Rio de Janeiro, in the early morning, by the Brazilian police. The event occurred on August 17, 2016.
Accused of being at the center of vast Olympic ticket trafficking, Patrick Hickey, 71, was first incarcerated in a Rio prison. Then the Brazilian justice system agreed, at the request of his lawyers, to authorize him to stay in a private apartment, permanently monitored, in the very chic Leblon district. According to the Irish press, the apartment would be paid for by the Irish Olympic Committee. A privilege granted for “medical reasons”, the Irishman displaying fragile health. But his passport is held by Brazilian justice. He cannot leave Brazil. It is also subject to a curfew set at 22 p.m. Finally, he must appear in court on the 20th of each month.
In two months, the Patrick Hickey case has changed little. The Irishman still claims innocence. But the date of his trial has not been determined. There does not seem to be any road map established by the Brazilian justice system either. Patrick Hickey could therefore see his stay in Rio de Janeiro extend for several more weeks, or even a few months. In any case, he risks up to 7 years in prison.
Since his arrest, Patrick Hickey has given up his multiple hats in the sports movement. He gave up the presidency of the Irish Olympic Committee, which he had led without interruption since 1989. Willie O'Brien, one of the vice-presidents, is acting as interim president. He is no longer officially a member of the IOC. And might not come back again. Finally, he also returned his card as president of the Association of European Olympic Committees (EOC). There is little chance of seeing him show up in Doha next month for the annual general assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC).
In Ireland, the Patrick Hickey affair has not been buried. Logic. The national press continues to follow the case closely. The daily Irish Times, in particular, reveals that the national Olympic committee commissioned the Deloitte agency to conduct an audit of its own governance. An internal investigation supposed to determine the responsibilities of each person in a scandal with much broader contours than just Patrick Hickey's office. Proof of the reality of the problem: its conclusions were announced for the month of October, they were postponed until next spring, with a pre-report in November 2017.
Determined to go further than just the facts of justice, the Dublin daily tried to better understand the personality and functioning of Patrick Hickey. Its journalists interviewed several players in the national sports movement, athletes, technicians and managers. What emerges is a nuanced portrait, where the Irishman often appears as a despot, but at the same time very involved in the development of sport and the sports movement in his country.
Among the personalities interviewed by theIrish Times, the most anti-Hickey turns out to be the former athlete Eamonn Coghlan, 4th in the 1500 m at the Montreal Games in 1976, then again in the 5000 m at the Moscow Games in 1980. The former middle-distance runner explains having been victim of the wrath of Patrick Hickey for having taken a position in favor of his rival, Richard Burrows, during the elections for president of the national Olympic committee in 2001. “He publicly criticized me,” explains Eamonn Coghlan, with these words: “Coghlan you are a loser, you voted for a loser, you will always be a loser and you have nothing to do with the Olympic committee as long as I am around. " Nice.
