Eddie Macken said yesterday that he is prepared to come back as chef d'équipe of the Irish showjumping team, but only if the current selection committee and its chairman resign.
Speaking to The Irish Times from Holland yesterday, Macken said he would get top riders Jessica Kürten and Harry Marshall back on the team and defuse the internal squabbling that is threatening Ireland's place in the Samsung Super League.
Both Kürten and Marshall have stated that they will not jump on a team with Cian O'Connor, who was stripped of his Olympic gold after a positive drugs test on his horse, Waterford Crystal.
"It would be my priority to get Jessica and Harry back on the team," Macken said yesterday. "Under the new structure I'm proposing, they'd have to ride with whoever is picked."
Macken said that he was contacted by the chairman of selectors, Taylor Vard, last Friday evening, after the Irish team had finished a disappointing fifth in the Aga Khan Cup.
"He asked me if I would come back on board and I said I would if he and his committee resigned and we reverted to the system that was in place last year, with the [Equestrian Federation of Ireland] in charge of selection. I told him I'd try and see what we could salvage out of it."
Macken was taken on as team trainer in February of last year but was then sacked after poor showings in the early super league shows.
Following calls for his reinstatement by a group of international riders, Macken was brought back as trainer in July, in time to lead the Irish team to victory at Dublin. Macken was also trainer for the Athens Olympics when O'Connor won gold.
Negotiations between Macken and the Show Jumping Association of Ireland (SJAI) on a contract for 2005 broke down, however, and Macken said yesterday that the terms - which included a six-month probation period and 28 days notice if the contract were to be severed - were totally unacceptable. "I wasn't going to give up my business in the States to take on a contract like that."
Macken proposed a three-year contract up to and including the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with a salary of €100,000 plus expenses. When the SJAI would not agree, Macken suggested a €1,000-a-day fee, but that too was rejected.
"There were rumours that I had changed the goal posts from €100,000 to €200,000, but that's totally untrue. They changed the goalposts on me. I didn't refuse the job - they wouldn't agree to my terms," he said.
Meanwhile the Equestrian Federation of Ireland (EFI) issued a statement yesterday saying that the current friction within the team was making the sport "ungovernable".
Team selection was the responsibility of the SJAI's international affairs committee and the chef d'équipe and not the riders' prerogative. "It is not the responsibility of the individual riders to decide who does, or does not, jump on any of the senior teams. Nor is it proper for a rider to withdraw their name from possible future selection if they are unhappy that they themselves were not selected for a particular team," the statement continued.
The federation expressed its "regret" at the stance taken by Harry Marshall "at a time when Ireland faces possible relegation from the Samsung Super League, with the serious implications this has for all our top riders and for the industry in Ireland".
Ireland is currently second-last in the eight-nation league and could be relegated next season unless the team can put in substantially improved performances at Aachen in a fortnight and at the league final in Barcelona next month.
The federation's statement came in response to Marshall's declaration on Sunday that he was joining with Kürten in refusing to ride on any team with O'Connor. Marshall also called for the resignations of the selection panel.
Two selectors - Tom Slattery and Liam Buckley - resigned at a meeting in the RDS on Sunday night, claiming there were "discrepancies" in the report delivered at the meeting by chef d'équipe Eamon Rice.