There is quite often uncertainty, confusion and lack of real understanding as to what is the role of the chef de mission at the olympic games.

This level of uncertainty is not confined to the general public nor to people working in the Olympic environment during the Games, but also transcends to the team at the Olympic Games. It could be that this position is not clearly articulated and explained to members of the team. But, as we have seen the opening ceremony that some competition and moreso await the beginning of our athletic pursuit in Rio in a few days’ time, it is useful to give a perspective that might help to clear up some of these misgivings and misunderstandings and help the general public to better understand what happens at an Olympic Games, apart from the competition and the winning of medals to which we have become accustomed.

The chef de mission of every national team competing at the Olympic Games has the ultimate responsibility for the welfare of his or her team. In addition to the chef de mission, the team comprises the medical personnel, administrative personnel, managers and coaches of the respective sport disciplines and finally, the most important arm of the team, the athletes.

As someone who has led Jamaica’s Olympic teams to the last five Games, from Atlanta in 1996 through to London in 2012, I have personally defined my role as: “Ensuring that the right environment is created to provide the athlete with the best conditions in which to give of their best during the Games”.

In other words, doing anything and everything, within the confines of the regulations, to help maximise the performance of the athletes when they compete. The buck stops with the chef de mission.

The officials function in the midstream in this process and organisationally provide indirect contact with the athletes daily. But this is the theory. In reality, the chef de mission is called upon to function at virtually every level, save of course for the obvious in the area of coaching, where this is not generally a skill or talent any chef de mission possesses.

The duties of the chef de mission, indeed, generally commence in earnest at least a year before the Games are held, as it has become mandatory to appoint someone to this position exactly 12 months prior to the staging of the Games. This is so that the chef de mission can attend the meeting of all 200-plus delegation heads in the host city at this time, in order to provide each delegation the opportunity to assess the state of readiness of the various venues and facilities that will be used during the Games.

In addition to this orientation, Jamaica’s chef de mission usually uses this opportunity to identify the best residence for the team (This quite often means one nearest to the dining room). No guarantee, but our pre-eminence normally ensures we get what we have scoped out the year before. Remember that the host city is voted on some seven years before the Games, as this is the amount of time it has been established is needed to ensure maximum efficiency all round.

It seems like a long time but, as we have seen, there have been no recent Games that have not been shrouded in doubt and scepticism, even up to the point of the opening ceremony. The case of Rio, of course, has been exacerbated by the real threat of the Zika virus.

In Jamaica’s experience where, coincidentally, the chef de mission has also been a member of the executive over the last seven Games at least, the level of administrative detail that has to be attended to during the year between the chef de mission meeting and the Games is so considerable that, unless one is self-employed, this could not be sustained. So what is involved?

This is understandably not well known as it takes place generally in the ‘back room’, but to list a few:

• Maintaining ongoing contact with the organisation committee of the Games, in this case, Rio.

• Maintaining ongoing contact with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to follow all the developments that arise which are related to the preparation for the Games.

• Ensuring compliance with the numerous deadlines set for submission of critical information, where failure to do so could jeopardise the team’s chances of putting forward its best delegation.

• Ensuring the timely submission of the required (long) list of athletes months before the selection of the actual team. This, in itself, is a delicate matter. The Jamaica Olympic Association would receive from each national federation (sport discipline) the names of every athlete that could possibly make the qualifying cut for the Games.

The broadest possible brush has to be applied here, for in principle you can work down from this list (delete people) but not add to this list, so considerable thought has to be put into identifying all athletes, including those who are barely on the fringe of making the team. In some of the previous Games, this long list has numbered in excess of 200, representing the widest possible net from which the eventual team is selected.

This list, of course, has to be kept highly confidential as, whilst it has to be submitted to the organising committee within a prescribed time, no athlete can know their name has been submitted, lest they conclude that they have been already selected.

The administrative tasks indeed appear unending and do become extremely demanding the closer one gets to the Games.

In selecting and ratifying the eventual team to the Games, the Olympic body has to ensure full compliance with every detail. The team is severely constrained within a quota system whereby the size of the athlete delegation determines:

• The specific number of officials that can accompany the team. There have been public complaints in the past about the number of officials attending, given the size of the delegation. Rest assured, the quota system ensures that there can be no instance where there is an imbalance between athletes and officials and more officials than is warranted attend. The online accreditation system automatically stalls the process if this is attempted.

• The actual athlete entry system per event is extremely rigid and less than due care could lead to athletes not being accredited competing. In Beijing, the advanced party, including the chef de mission and deputy chef de mission, as well as Jamaica’s ambassador to China (who was the team’s official attaché), were not allowed to enter the village for 36 hours after arrival in the city because of a challenge with the entry of one of our top athletes. The system simply would not accept it and there was every possibility that this extremely well-decorated athlete might not have been able to compete.

So the chef de mission is the first sign of a team’s arrival at the Games. No member of the team can enter the village until the chef de mission has completed the extensive check off to ensure that all the entries are validated and the entire team has been entered and appropriately accredited, in conformity with the regulations and the quota system. And, as we have seen, neither can the chef de mission.

So the advanced party is finally installed. The real work and the real challenges begin there.

These include:

• Thorough inspection of the residence, including a detailed inventory check of every single item in every room. By then, the host volunteers assigned to the team are in place and they provide tremendous support in ensuring that this inspection can be completed within a day. With a delegation of 80 persons (the team sizes we have been carrying recently) this means going through 40 rooms, at least, to ensure all is in place. Incidentally, this check is repeated prior to departure and any missing or broken items have to be accounted for financially. So the chef de mission has to be first in and last out.

• Allocating the accommodation of the team in the most ideal manner. Despite the fact that this is done in concert with the respective team management, this is quite often a source of discontent, requiring revision when the athletes arrive. Athlete ‘X’ does not want to room with Athlete ‘Y’ and so on. The athletes have to be comfortable, hence the chef de mission has to sort this out. The chef de mission does not want to be blamed for underperformance by an athlete because they were not as comfortable as they would have liked. It has happened nonetheless.

• Ensuring the minimum of difficulty when an athlete arrives in the village for the first time. Athens in 2004 was a nightmare. Members of the team arrived at various times during the night but invariably between 2:00 am and 4:00 am and could not get into the village unless the chef de mission was there to validate their accreditation. This meant staying awake until the flights arrived and pulling on clothes, often over ‘peejams’, to walk the 600 metres to the accreditation centre. These accreditation issues often took hours to sort out. Despite this, the chef de mission still had to attend the mandatory chefs de mission meeting starting at 7:00 am. These were the meetings that heard all the numerous complaints from delegations and where the management sought to alleviate or solve the challenges. This was not a meeting that could be missed.

• Ensuring that all respective managers and coaches are familiar with the village and all the venues, meeting times and places for their sport and indeed, in some cases, to respond to challenges with respective team transport to get to competition venues. Nothing can be taken for granted. This is normally communicated at the general team meeting held once all members of the delegation are installed, but invariably this has to be reinforced to ensure that no slips take place.

• Being available to every athlete who has a concern — which should really come through their team management) but which the chef cannot ignore once it is brought to his or her attention.

• Managing every challenge the athletes have, irrespective of how trivial it might seem. These include having to deal with the request from a potential medal-winner for a wash pan and washing soap because she was averse to using the established washing machines and dryers efficiently and conveniently positioned for their benefit. You have to manage this request, not necessarily accede to it.

• Being on top of every development as the Games progress and ensuring timely communication to the officials and athletes.

• Selecting the flag bearer for the opening and the closing ceremonies, often not the easiest of tasks.

• Selecting the officials who can parade at the opening ceremony. The official rules make it an athlete’s parade and only six officials should march, but nearly every official wants to be part of the opening ceremony so that all their family can see them on international television. I believe that one official of blessed memory has still not forgiven me for omitting him from the opening ceremony parade at one of the Games.

• No chef de mission serious about the team’s ultimate success will choose to leave the village for long, even to attend official meetings outside. There is a myth that the officials have a great time watching the events. Far from it. General officials, like the medical personnel, are limited to a certain number of sport disciplines and are only accredited to those venues. These have to be very carefully assigned prior to the Games to ensure that your medical needs, for example, are adequately addressed during the Games, and this is one of the other decisions that has to be made at the time of the final submission of the team, weeks before departure to the Games and ratified by the organising committee.

No error can be made here as one has to ensure that the team has medical attention whenever and wherever needed. But the chef de mission normally is assigned one or two transferable accreditations which have to be used in the most discretionary manner to provide for circumstances where an official is needed at a point or place where no one else is accredited to enter.

It means, of course, being available at all times. The chef de mission, incidentally, is normally the only person whose accreditation would allow access to all places and points during the Games. And with good reason. He or she has to be available and have access to all points to ensure the team secures the right environment to perform to the best of each person’s ability.

• Being in constant contact with the NOC centre — the central management and communication point for the Games — for any new developments which need to be immediately communicated to the team.

• Managing the allocation of the sponsors’ gear. Under normal circumstances this should be an easy function, but when there is an apparent over-abundance of supply, this becomes extremely challenging. Nuff said.

Even this process has to be managed very carefully.

• Efficiently managing the limited dedicated transport allocated to the team, again on the basis of the size of the delegation. All quotas.

• Efficiently managing the limited allocation of visitor passes to enter the village. This factor has led, on occasion, to athlete discontent (London being a case in point), where the number of visitor passes allocated (again on the basis of team size) was just not enough to make every team member happy. But it is what it is, unfortunately, although, in typical Jamaican style, we often find a way around it.

In Beijing, the team was allocated 14 passes per day and this had to be managed daily to allow for family first and any other Government official or other person who wished to visit the village. After the team’s and moreso Usain Bolt’s early success, the demand for passes exceeded 50 per day. Requests were made to the stern Chinese officials for extra passes but they refused to yield until we offered a few pins in exchange for passes. Did we succeed? After the pin deal, we often had 34 passes per day, unofficially of course. The Jamaican pin, incidentally, is the most sought after pin at the Games, bar none.

• Maintaining dialogue and communication with local and international media daily to ensure Jamaica’s best foot is put forward at all times

• Managing all disturbances, if and when they occur. In Sydney 2000, Jamaica was on the verge of “strong action” by the IOC for bringing the Olympics into disrepute, as over 40 of the 53 athletes protested, in the international media zone, the selection of Merlene Ottey over Peta-Gaye Dowdie to run the 100m. That day, Jamaica’s participation in the Sydney Olympics was perhaps saved through the timely intervention of the chef de mission and his deputy.

The role of the chef de mission is often misunderstood by people working during the Games as well as athletes. In one instance, an employee, after seeing me enter the dining room for six days, stopped me and asked me how I managed to cook for so many athletes. On another occasion, a seasoned athlete questioned me as to whether she had been entered for a particular event. When advised this was not my call, but rather that of the track and field management she enquired: “But aren’t you the chef?” This matter had to be delicately dealt with.

So the Games are officially over, the medals won and counted and it is time to leave the village for home. The chef de mission has to be the last to leave after doing the comprehensive checklist and making atonement for any item not accounted for. Often, excess gear are left behind and it is the chef de mission who has to secure it, ship it, or otherwise ensure that they are safely returned to Jamaica.

In a nutshell, the chef de mission has ultimate responsibility for the comfort, peace of mind and helping to create the right environment for the athletes to succeed. The job requires significant multitasking skill, the ability to walk between the raindrops and not get wet, the ability to exercise diplomacy without compromising.

The chef de mission presides over a melting pot of different personalities, athletes with different agendas and goals, persons from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds, demographics and experiences and, nowadays, living legends and those aspiring to be. The job requires the dexterity to be able to maintain control without alienation (or minimal at worse), the flexibility to deal with each situation on its merit, but at the same time with a commitment to ensuring that Jamaica’s flag and colours are held high at all times and that the people of Jamaica can be justly proud of the athletes, regardless of how many medals are won.

Three days after returning from Beijing, I got an e-mail from an athlete whom had I passed each day in the village and whom I simply encouraged each time to be calm and whom I reassured we were asking no more than that each athlete does his or her best on the big day. From a total unknown at the start of the Games she reached the final of her event. Her e-mail read: “Thank you, Mr Anderson for all your words of encouragement. People don’t often realise how important simple words such as yours mean. Thank you, Sir.”

Mission accomplished.

There is no greater reward than to know you have made a positive difference in the life of someone.