Kang Chen, the Vice President – World Sports, International Committee of the Deaf (ICSD), has appointed former president and vice president Donalda Ammons and Josef Willmerdinger to join him onto the three-person Deaflympics Evaluation and Coordination Commission. Both Ammons and Willmerdinger were responsible for heading up the catastrophic selection of host countries for the 2011 Winter and 2013 Summer Deaflympics and yet, Kang believes that they are his best choice of counsel to safeguard future games.

The major task of the commission is to monitor the progress of the Deaflympics Organising Committee (DOC) and assist the DOC in the delivery of future games. Their first task will be the scrutiny of the 2017 DOC host Turkey with site inspections and inspections of forward plans and preparations.

Such an appointment demonstrates once again the inability of the ICSD Executive to make rational decisions based on previous experience. They have approved the full time appointment of their CEO Rebrov from Russia who has been found complicit in the falsifying of athletes audiograms in order to discredit an athlete and now Chen has appointed Ammons and Willmerdinger whose decisions to choose the one-man operation in Slovakia that swindled millions of dollars in the Winter Deaflympics that never was and both were also in charge when ICSD simultaneously, allowed Greece a nation with insurmountable debt to go ahead and host the 2013 Summer Deaflympics.

Chen and Rebrov should be asked why they did not appoint former president Craig Crowley onto their Evaluation and Cooordination Commission. He would be a good candidate as he demonstrated that he was capable of identifying the major flaws in Slovakia and Greece as soon as he was appointed. If the ICSD Executive is looking for someone with backbone and an eye for detail, then Crowley would have been seen as a good choice.

The present incumbents were amongst those who were highly critical of Crowley’s decision to stop the Slovakian Winter games in May 2010 when his due diligence and site visits discovered major flaws – the current president of the ICSD, Ruhkledev was instrumental in the defiance of Crowley and persuading the ICSD to overule him in December 2010 and reinstate the Slovakian games which, in the end, had to be cancelled when Crowley’s concerns were proven right. It is not surprising then, that ICSD has reverted to type, pre- Crowley.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Deaflympics ?