Since former World Games 2010 Foundation CEO Jack Kelly resigned for personal reasons in July, John Long, chair of the Foundation's Board of Directors, has become both a public face and guiding force behind the planning efforts for the 16-day event that is now two years away. Long, who serves as CEO for the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF), recently returned from the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong, where he participated in leading the U.S. Equestrian Team. Back in Kentucky, the Shelbyville resident and former chief operating officer of Churchill Downs is setting his sights on preparing Lexington to welcome its global equestrian audience in 2010.
He recently discussed those preparations with Business Lexington editor-in-chief Tom Martin. The complete interview is available by clicking on the podcast below.
TM: With Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games now just two years away, what's been accomplished since it was announced that the event was coming to Lexington and what challenges remain ahead?
JL: A lot has been accomplished. I think if you look at the Horse Park and if you've driven out there recently, you can see that it is a giant construction zone - with the new indoor arena and the outdoor stadium literally gone, and driving on dirt roads and cones everywhere to make sure that you don't go off the road. So you can see, one of the big changes over the last years has happened at the Horse Park. Now many of those changes would have happened anyway. But they've been accelerated and made even more important as a result of the Games coming in 2010.
I think organizationally much has been accomplished. We've got a first-class management team. We've got some of the best consultants in the world that are used to working in big game environments: everything from security, traffic, parking to planning. We have a hospitality consultant that we brought onboard a couple of months ago who is just finishing up work in Beijing. We've identified the consultant that will be working with us on the opening and closing ceremonies. He did the Pan Am Games in Rio this past year, and he's also just coming back from Beijing, will be doing the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010. So we've really, I think, been able to round out the organization with a very sophisticated and experienced batch of consultants, and then our cracker-jack management team within. I think we're really, really well prepared to enter into this last two years.
TM: How do the improvements of the Horse Park inform the future and what might be happening there?
JL: The United States Equestrian Federation itself does not host or operate any kind of competitions. Rather it is the national governing body of the sport which licenses many of the competitions which occur in the country. So when we look at the Horse Park, we see all kinds of opportunities which did not exist before, as a result of the construction of this new indoor stadium, predominantly. The Horse Park has not been able to be competitive with places like Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Albuquerque for many of the breed and Western shows that occur over the winter months, simply because the Horse Park hasn't had a temperature-controlled facility to host them. So with this new arena ... it will be able to bid and compete for those competitions that they have not been able to chase before. The outdoor arena to have 6,500 or so permanent seats - expandable, which we will be doing for the Games, to in excess of 30,000 - will be another great opportunity to bring events that either were too small or too large to the Horse Park during the summer months.
And maybe the biggest thing of all to the horse lover and to the competitor is the quality of the footing that has been put into both the Walnut Arena, one of the current training arenas where there are competitions that are held, and that will be going into the new outdoor. It is state of the art. It's as good as anything that the Olympics have seen, and that kind of footing will be here at the Horse Park as well. So all of those things, with the possibility of new restaurants and new hospitality, new entry, new signage, it's going to look like a brand-new Horse Park ... at this time a year from now.
TM: Another big element that will have to be constructed during this time is the endurance course. Tell us about that.
JL: Well, endurance is a sport that is competed internationally. It's not one of the Olympic sports; it is one of the FEI International sports. And it's really, really remarkable in (that) it's a competitor base, but mostly the fact that these guys are going to be going 100 miles (starting) in the morning and finishing up sometime in the evening. There will be a vet check at the Horse Park near the campground area Ö where the vets take a look at the horses and make sure that they are fit and ready to go back out on course again. One hundred miles. I mean, think about that: that's greater than the distance from the Horse Park to Louisville and probably back a little bit again, all in one day. And it will require the competition to leave the Horse Park; horses and riders will be going out on contiguous farms and contiguous properties, which has been a great and very rewarding conversation that we've had with the farm owners so as to be able to make this happen. It's really a great opportunity, one of the first opportunities that we'll see where we'll have farm owners that are contiguous to the Horse Park that may be in the horse business in a completely and totally different way that are making available their property for the purpose of this endurance competition.
TM: Does it also involve cross-county considerations?
JL: It does. We're going to be in two counties at the same time. Horses will be leaving one and going into another, from into Georgetown and Scott County and coming back to the Horse Park. So from a logistical and a map quest kind of way, it's fascinating what we're going to be doing.
TM: Tickets - it's a big subject. Let's start with some clarification and some numbers. There have been some big numbers thrown out by various people ranging from 500,000 people - or tickets, that's very unclear - to 900,000 people/tickets over those 16 days. Can you clarify that for us? Are we looking at people or tickets in terms of those big numbers?
JL: You're right; there have been numbers all over the place. The numbers really have to do with the tickets and the number of tickets that will be available. The accurate number is in the neighborhood of 600,000. There will be about 450,000 ticketed seats available. And we estimate that there will be about 150,000 general admission tickets that will be available. So the sum of those two is right about 600,000 tickets that will be made available for purchase.
TM: If you were to break this down to a day-to-day snapshot of what Lexington can expect during the Games, what kind of numbers do you expect on a daily basis? Is it possible to predict that at this point?
JL: I think it's probably impossible to predict it with any degree of accuracy, but I would expect we're going to see a big spike for the opening ceremonies and the opening weekend. We know that the show jumping final, just like we saw in Hong Kong, is one of the most popular events. And we also know that cross country day will be a large attendance day, just as it is at the Rolex Three-Day. It's highly possible that we will end up with over 100,000 people at the Horse Park just on the cross country day of the three-day eventing.
TM: Another clarification with regard to tickets: there have been some transactions going on, but not sales as I understand it. These have been deposits. Is that correct?
JL: Yes, that is correct, because we really don't have row numbers yet. We don't know the seat numbers yet because the two largest venues are under construction. We have not been able nor was it time ... to put tickets for sale. ...We have made available a ticket deposit program, which allows a depositor to reserve, purchase roughly half the costs of the seats, so they know that they will have seats available when they arrive. We've sold these on a discipline-specific basis, Ö so we've made available all the dressage tickets, for example, or all of show jumping tickets. We've taken deposits on about 18 percent of the total seats that would be made available, so in big, round numbers, we've got in excess of 80 percent of the seats that will still be made available.
TM: Recently the World Games 2010 Foundation has undergone some changes in leadership at the top. The Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have left. The CFO position has recently been filled. Naturally when this kind of transition goes on there is some loss of momentum. Are you conducting a search for a CEO and how have you addressed this situation?
JL: I think it's only natural for organizations like ours to assume that there are going to be some changes in leadership over time. I mean the foundation has already been around for two years, and we've still got two years to go. And so it's not unexpected, we were not caught off guard, we were not surprised by the changes. (Former CEO) Jack (Kelly) did an absolutely terrific job. Jack got us to where we are. Jack, through some health issues and personal issues of his own, didn't feel that he had the energy and the focus that is going to be required for the next two years. (CFO) Marty's (Matthews) departure really had absolutely nothing to do with Jack's departure, but since they happened at the same time, it's really only natural to assume that somehow they were connected, and they weren't.
The momentum hasn't really changed at all. I think if anything, the momentum has actually been intensified. We're going faster in different directions. The time that we've been spending since Jack's departure and Marty's departure has been really more inward looking and internal looking, to make sure that the budgets really do make a lot of sense, that we have a staffing plan for the future, that we know what's going to be happening six months from now, and 12 months along. We've really been spending an inordinate amount of time looking inside, so from the outside looking in, it may appear that there has been a loss of momentum. But I think the opposite is rather true. It's really been a very thought-provoking and thought-producing time internally as we get to this two-year mark where things are now really going to happen quickly.
Now as it relates to the CEO, the board has debated this at some length, as has the executive committee of the Foundation, and they believe that the organization, with Rob Hinkle as the chief operating officer and Walter Hurd as the chief administrative officer reporting in to the chair, will work just fine for the balance of the year. We'll sit down at the end of the year and decide whether the organization can continue in the way it's currently configured or whether there will be a requirement to go out and find a CEO.
TM: How have relations been between the Foundation and the city of Lexington? Are you working closely together?
JL: I think they're wonderful. The mayor came out to the office after I got back from Hong Kong, and we had just a wonderful meeting. We talked about a range of issues that we both need to address. We have an understanding now about what the responsibilities of the city are to the city and what the Foundation's responsibilities are to the Horse Park. And as we sort out these responsibilities, we won't cross over each other. We will know what each is responsible for and what we can rely on the other to do. So it was a terrific meeting, and I think we are locked and loaded for the next two years.
TM: We have two considerable entities that are relying fairly heavily on the private sector for support. Of course with this economy - and even in good times - that pot is limited. How are you working that out so that you're not working at cross purposes for sponsorships?
JL: We're actually in the very early stages of discussions with the city on how we could do that together. It's not the economic situation that we thought we were going to be in three years ago when we bid on the Games. It's certainly not the situation that we thought we were going to be in two-plus years ago when we won the bid. Everything looked wonderful, the stock market was great, there was life after the dot-com bust, and we were ready to reload our 401(k)s and retire early. That's not the situation today. So it's forced us to be a little bit more creative and to walk away from some of the plans that we had early on. There was really lots of discussion and thought and in fact hope that the Foundation would be able to land multi-million dollar sponsors in a variety of different categories, that the largesse as a result of having the Games here and those sponsors would be able to assist the city and the region in their efforts, and I think we all now are under the very clear assumption that we have to do things differently. And so we will get there, but we will get there in a completely different way.
TM: I'd like to turn to your trip to Hong Kong during the Olympics and maybe a message from that experience to the city of Lexington as it prepares for the World Equestrian Games?
JL: The hospitality, the hospitality that the city of Hong Kong put on, especially in the hotels in which the athletes and the teams stayed, was really surprising. This is a very, very, very big city, and it's a very dense city in terms of the way it's constructed, and there are 7 million people in just the interior of the city. It's like any big city, and events come and go, and there might be 29 events going on at the same time. But in all of that, the major hotels and the airports and every place that the tourists and the people coming in for the Games attended, the hospitality was absolutely through the roof. From bellman to front desk to taxi to people in the restaurants, they would ask you how did the competition go last night, and 'We read about you in the paper,' and 'Go USA!' And there was just a tremendous amount of work that was done.
The most impressive of all, I think, was the welcoming protocols that were put into place at the airport. I have an opportunity to travel a lot of places throughout the world, and if I go into a place that I have never been before, you're always a little bit nervous. Will I find my bag? Will I get in the right line to get through immigration? How will I get through security? How will I find a taxi? Those of us that had not been into Hong Kong in such a large group before had a lot of those concerns. But getting off the plane, there was no way to get lost. You didn't have to walk 20 feet before you could find someone that was dressed in the Olympic garb, identifying themselves as part of the organizing committee, that spoke nine different languages, that could tell you exactly where you needed to go. We actually got off the plane, through security, picked up the bags, got through immigration and were in the taxi cabs in probably 30 minutes. So that airport experience, that very, very first experience for people coming in from all over the world, was absolutely breathtaking. I think that's probably one of the biggest lessons that we could bring back home.
TM: Given a recent rise in the rates of injuries and eventing, what innovations do you anticipate might be on hand to protect both human and equine competitors?
JL: It's a big issue and one which we are focusing on each and every day. I don't think that there is another issue that equestrian sport faces that is any greater than some of the surrounding controversies that have come from the injuries and fatalities of both horses and riders over the last years. Just this last week though, David O'Connor, the president of the United States Equestrian Federation and former gold medal winner at Sydney, and I met with Eric Grolke from the University of Kentucky engineering school, and we are going to begin a project with the university to think about ways in which jumps can be constructed in a completely different way, so that jumps can fall apart when they need to fall apart. Jumps will still look traditionally like jumps have always looked, but they will have science in their construction so to come up with a way to reduce injuries and fatalities.
There's a lot of science that we're going to have to apply to this. There have been programs already taken up by the University of Bristol in the UK, and we've put Dr. Grolkey and the two guys working at the University of Bristol in contact. We're going to exchange information, not develop new studies or new techniques. Rather we're going to piggyback on the things that have already been developed at the university and see if we can come up with a brand new way of constructing cross country designs. For the horse side, the very same way, we need to make sure our partners - our horse athletes, our equine athletes - are going to be protected in the same way that we are going to protect our two-legged athletes. So I'm really heartened about what has come out of the safety summit, which was also held here in Lexington, where we had people from all over the world that came in, that could discuss all of the issues surrounding the cross country incidents that we've had over the last couple of years. Physicians, physiologists, engineers, riders, officials from all over the world and we really have kind of put the locus of fixing this problem, of really identifying what the issues are and fixing the problem, here in the state of Kentucky. I'm encouraged about what's going to come out of this.
TM: A question that you've addressed in many different ways throughout the interview, but any specific logistical concerns that we haven't touched on that are presenting challenges?
JL: Ö It is going to pose some transportation challenges, and those challenges I think are going to be reconciled by more discussions that we're going to be having with the city and with the consultants in the ways that we are going to be able to move people around. I think that's going to be the single largest issue. In Hong Kong, there was no parking at the cross country venue, which is similar to the situation that we're going to have here in the Horse Park. So everybody went from the hotel to a central place to get on buses to go to the Golf Club where the cross country event was held. Ö But when you think about taking a cab and then waiting in line to get on a bus right away, I'm thinking that this isn't going to work. Well, it was flawless. There were a lot of buses. Number one, you have to have plenty of transportation to make it work. The buses left every three and a half minutes, whether they were full or not. And so there was a continual movement of buses. ... Great lesson for us here! I think that's going to be our single biggest challenge, moving people from all of the hotels into the Horse Park. Now the hard part is really taking them out of the Horse Park. Everybody is going to come in at different times in the morning, but when the event's done at the end of the day, everybody's going to want to leave at the same time. And that's really going to be the daunting effort.
TM: That crowd is going to be flowing back into the downtown area where many of the hotels are concentrated. What does downtown Lexington need to anticipate at the end of a typical day during these 16 days?
JL: It needs to anticipate a party that goes on 16 nights in a row. And I think if we get it right, and I know we will, it will be a breathtaking event downtown. We saw this in Aachen for the World Equestrian Games two years ago, and what made it work was the Aachen Show Grounds knew the perimeters, knew what they were responsible for and they did it really, really well. The city of Aachen also had the perimeters and their responsibilities and what they had to do on their to do list. And they did it really, really well. And then the communication between the show grounds and the city was really what made the whole thing work altogether. That's the place that we need to get to here: that everybody - the city, the Horse Park, the foundation - understands and agrees what each of their responsibilities will be so that when we go forward, it will be as flawless as it was in Hong Kong and as beautiful as it was in Aachen.