THE 2001 WORLD ATHLETE OF THE YEAR SELECTIONS,
THE MATHEMATICS/STATISTICS AND KNUD SONDERGAARD

Every announced CISS event has always mirrored the mood and spirit of the international deaf sports community. The recent December 31, 2001, website announcement by the CISS Secretary General, Donalda Ammons, about the selections of Terence Parkin and Veronika Gouskova as the 2001 Sportsman and Sportswoman of theYear Award winners, was no exception.

For the first time, these selections were conducted without the chairmanship  of its project creator, developer, lawmaker and founder - the author of  another ongoing important and CISS-related material.

I am writing this material in my capacity as the deposed Chairman of the CISS Awards Commission  ( please note that  my undemocratic and unjustified removal from the position at the end of the recent XIXth Deaflympic Summer Games was another prime reason that compelled me to file a Verified Complaint   against the defendants Ammons, Jerald Jordan and John Lovett - at the USA District Court on September 17, 2001 ).

That December 31, 2001 public news announcement ( see www.ciss.org NEWS 31 DEC), indeed, produced a very pleasant news: both Parkin and Gouskova deservedly won the titles of the world's top deaf athletes of the year for 2001.

My warmest congratulations to these outstanding athletes and their respective National Sports Associations!

However, I felt uneasy and uncomfortably  with the two items related to that December 31, 2001, website announcement, which, by the way, also featured a broadly-smiling, cute  and youthfully-looking color photo portrait of Ammons, the event announcer.

Number One Item:
In her announcement, Ammons  did not mention a single word about the financial sponsor of the Awards - the Widex, a Denmark-based  international company that manufactures the hearing aids. Thus, Ammons failed to show due recognition, credit, publicity and respect  in her front-page  announcement toward   that generous   Award sponsor, which, as I understand, gives away to the CISS  $10,000 annually.
Officially and commercially, the Award is supposed to be called as the CISS-Widex Deaf World SportsMan and SportsWoman of the Year!

Regarding Gouskova. Ammons mentioned her winning the gold medal in 4x200medley. That was incorrect because that 4x200 meter medley  swimming  relay event was never was on the program of the XIXth Deaflympic Summer Games in Rome. Instead,  it was the 4x200 meter  free style relay event.
Also, there is missing part  in the Ammons' announcement as follows:  in which event  did Gouskova won her fifth gold medal at the 2001 Games in Rome?
For your information, the event in which that Russian swimmer   collected her fifth  gold medal was the 4x100 meter medley relay event.
Were these  professional negligence  and  inconsistencies made by Ammons as other acts  of her continued sports journalistic  and editorial incompetence?

Regarding the case of Parkin. Specifically, what kind of the World Series swimming event was held in Australia during August/September 2001?  By carefully viewing and verifying the 2001 F.I.N.A.  calendar, I have not found such an event like the World Series on its official calendar list!
That is truly enough about Ammons and her unprofessional work as the CISS official!

Item Number Two:  
It is related to the matter of the mathematics/statistics! The major problem  with the December 31, 2001 website announcement, as I see , was with the following:  how and in what manner did every Award candidate - male and female - receive and accumulate every point from each selections Commission member?

Let me repeatedly educate you that when I ran the annual - i.e.,in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 -  Award selections project, my selections Commission  utilized the following point system:

1st choice - 15 points
2nd choice - 10 points
3rd choice - 8 points
4th choice - 7 points
5th choice - 6 points
6th choice - 5 points
7th choice - 4 points
8th choice - 3 points
9th choice - 2 points
10th choice - 1 point.

Such the above-mentioned  point system was also successfully used with my international 13-member Commission-chaired and once-a-lifetime Deaflympic Games Athlete of the Century and Deaf Olympian of the Century selections projects in the early part of 2001     ( for your information, the winners of these prestigious Century Awards were, respectively, Giovanni Calissano,  a 42-medal  Deaflympic Games winner in shooting from Italy, and Ildiko Rejto, a deaf fencing sensation from Budapest, Hungary, who competed in five successive Olympic Games between 1960 and 1976 ).

Now, let us say that in the 2001 selections ballot voting  there were 9 members of the Commission,  according to  the December 31, 2001 announcement,  and let us hypothetically use the foregoing  1996-2000 Award point system. By using such a point system with 9 persons voting, the maximum number of points Parkin, the 2001 Award winner, would receive  would be a total of 135 points  ( 9 members x 15 points each = 135 points ).
However, the website announcement reports that Parkin received  153 points, instead! Was it an accurate mathematical or statistical count?

Another questionable thing was about the runner-up in the male category - Jamal Bradley, a basketball star from the USA, who collected 99 points. My own count of points for the second place finisher would show that the maximum number of points to obtain would be 90 points ( 9 Commission members x10 points each = 90, this formula is used  in case Parkin gets all the first place choice slots  from all 9 Commission members ). I also have reservations as to how Gouskova, the Award winner in  the women's division, received an aggregate of 134 points.

Overall, I have no idea as to what kind of point system was used in 2001?  The website announcement also does not mention as to who was in charge of the 2001 Award selections project, who tabulated the voting point tally and how was it  tabulated?

However, through my rampant worldwide contacts, I received the information that  the person in charge of the 2001 Award selections project was Knud Sondergaard, the  former CISS Secretary General from Denmark.

I have no qualms about Sondergaard's qualifications since I view him as a person in a very mixed fashion:
a) he is one of Europe's brightest deaf sports administrators;
b) he has, unlike  his former boss Jordan and the current CISS Secretary General Ammons,  proved to be a person who knows so much about the international  sports activities among the hearing people, like the Olympic Games, the world and European championships in different sports; he also, unlike Jordan, impressed me with his vast knowledge of the political world affairs.
c) he, however,  used to be an obedient servant and die-hard loyalist of Jordan  in the CISS  EC between 1971 and 1995;
d) he, very sadly,  had a troubled  life in  the CISS EC  from his very own start in 1971 and to his very own  end in 1997;
e) he worked hard to master his English, the official language of the CISS ( I always liked  to read his well-prepared Minutes of the CISS Congress sessions and the EC meetings  in the CISS Bulletin issues), but  he was not  a flamboyant Gestuno communicator, which was why Jordan was the one who single-handedly  and solely controlled the constantly stagnant and cash-poor organization's affairs during his 24 years' "one-man" rule in   the CISS, and
f) he was never friends with me because of Jordan who has not said a single nice word about me  and my varied CISS work in the past.

For the factual historical record, Sondergaard's presence in the CISS EC was the key reason as to why Jordan was elected and numerously re-elected as the CISS President  by the CISS EC' inner circle (not by the  CISS Congress delegates! ) between 1971 and 1993.       
When, in 1971, Sondergaard, then aged 35,  was just elected to the CISS EC, he, as        "a novice",  had the nerve to challenge the 69 year-old Antoine Dresse, the giant in  the CISS history ( Dresse of Belgium, as you know, was one of the two founding fathers of the CISS in 1924 ). At that 1971 CISS EC meeting,  the always well-mannered and elegantly-dressed gentleman Dresse wanted to propose  an internationally-experienced veteran and a true CISS patriot, Francesco Rubino of Italy  to become the next CISS President. But Sondergaard was the one to intimidatedly rebel against Dresse's wish: instead, the then internationally-inexperienced   and future CISS demagogue and opportunist Jordan, Sondergaard's choice for  the top CISS job, was nominated and picked  for then vacant CISS Presidency position .
Read Jordan's own words as follows:

" He ( Sondergaard ) then nominated me and to my even greater surprise, I was elected.
In many  ways it   was a big   challenge since I was   completely lacking in international experience except for my four years on the Executive Committee"
( Jerald  Jordan's own story - JJ's Jottings - printed   in the CISS Bulletin, February 1995, Number 178, page 4 ).

When I last saw Dresse in March ,1995, in Helsinki, Finland, I had  a lengthy interview with him there. At that interview, in which the 2 other deaf persons were present - Eugene Fraiture and Joseph Francois ( both were also from Belgium ), then very aging Dresse ( he was about 93 ) and by reminiscing his storied life, among the other things, spoke very harshly of   Sondergaard's disrespectful  and brash behavior at the  door-closed  CISS  EC meeting held in Adelboden, Switzerland, in 1971.
To prove my last interview meeting   with Dresse, I have good photos of Dresse and myself  together  taken by the two  ladies from Venezuela, Maria de Bendequz, a former CISS EC member, and her young assistant, Milagro Requena. These 1995 monumental  photos   are prominently displayed in the  regally-decorated  and spacious living rooms of my two different residences in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and New York, USA.

Moreover, for Sondergaard's successfully clandestine lobbying efforts on Jordan's behalf in the CISS, the perpetually power-hungry  and attention-seeking  manipulator Jordan did not forget to show  "his eternal gratitude, support and friendship"  toward that deaf Dane. Jordan reciprocated his staunch ally and comrade by successfully nominating Sondergaard, for example, for the 1981 Gallaudet University Powrie Vaux  Doctor Medallion ( read the Gallaudet Today Magazine, Fall 1981, page 13 )  and the 1985 CISS Gold Medal of Honor. In addition,  in 1999 Jordan played a  very persuasive role in inducing Lovett to nominate  Sondergaard as the CISS Honorary Life Member.
Sondergarard had also earned  a very unique place in the CISS history: twice he was engaged in the wrongful acts of nepotism. His two wives - Lene Ravn and Barbara Krueger - were appointed by him ( naturally, with Jordan's tacit approvals ) as the CISS Technical Directors in Swimming and Athletics, respectively!

Interestingly, in the summer of 1997, when Sondergaard was  publicly denied - in a total disgrace - the chance in getting  re-nominated for the CISS General Secretary position at the 35th CISS Congress, he took his personal and retaliatory measures against the CISS EC. Sondergaard harassingly tortured Lovett, Ammons and the entire CISS EC  members by stubbornly refusing to return all the CISS  archival and office documents he was holding at his  famous Langaavej 41 DK-2650 Hvidovre, Denmark residence to Ammons, his immediate successor ( I have a 1998 letter  from Ammons expressing her frustrations with Sondergaard's irresponsible and intransigent behavior ). Eventually, Sondergaard, under Jordan's interference, meddling, influence and pressure, "surrendered" by returning  the CISS documents to its rightful place. But, believe it or not, in March, 1999, Sondergaard miraculously and   quickly got "rehabilitated" by Lovett and Ammons at the 36th CISS Congress in Davos, Switzerland.  Lovett ( as he candidly  confided to me on April 10, 1999 ),  under Jordan's usual tactics of  shrewdness, persuasion, intimidation   and pressure, nominated the 1997-1998 CISS troublemaker ( also, the 1971 CISS EC meeting rebel ) - Knud Sondergaard -  to become the Honorary Life Member of the CISS!

You can see  what kind of politics the current three lawsuit defendants - Jordan, Ammons and Lovett - played  and do still play inside the CISS!

Please note that today Sondergaard, at the age of about 65, and in spite of his previous  CISS misconducts, received another "prize" from Lovett and Ammons in 2001.He was hand-picked by Lovett and Ammons (again, with Jordan's tacit approval ) to replace me as the person in the charge of the 2001 Award selections project!

Back to the subject of  questionable 2001 Award selections point system.
In the interests of freedom of information, fairness and justice, will Sondergaard, a one time agricultural economic statistician for the government of Denmark, be willing to release the complete mathematical/statistical voting scoring sheet/s on the website and let any interested person to see as to how and where was every point  from every selections Commission member  allocated to, i.e., to which candidate?
The main  purpose of the question  is that  let the world to see and judge as to what kind of work Sondergaard, my successor and  the CISS Honorary Life Member, did  with the 2001 Award selections project, especially in the area of the voting scoring  tabulation!
I do sincerely hope that the experienced Sondergaard  did  a mathematically/statistically accurate, error-free job with the 2001 Award selections.
As a matter of fact, when I was the CISS Awards Commission Chairman, I had always gladly, readily  and  confidently provided  my  complete and mathematically/statistically-prepared voting scoring sheets re: the 1996-2000 Award Selections to anyone who requested me to do so, including to my former colleagues, Lovett and Ammons in advance  before announcing the final results to the world every December 31st.

And, lastly, where was Lovett as  the chief supervisor of the CISS? Did Lovett ever dutifully review and carefully double-check the Ammons-written announcement and Sondergaard-prepared complete voting scoring sheet/s, if any,  before the December 31, 2001 website announcement was released to the world?

After you have become familiar with this material, I am bringing up an important question: in what kind of  the  mood and spirit is our international deaf sports community now?

Yours Truly,

Rafael Pinkhasov Pinchas


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