Courtesy: Swimming Canada
The Swimming Canada Board of Directors, following consultation and agreement with Ahmed El-Awadi, made the announcement to staff and key partners earlier today that he will be pursuing other opportunities and spending more time with family.
El-Awadi joined Swimming Canada as CEO in 2013, and oversaw a period of significant growth in the organization, including unprecedented success at major championships, Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“We commend Ahmed on what he has accomplished with Swimming Canada over the course of his 11-year tenure. During his time with us, Ahmed was a key contributor to the success of Swimming Canada, growing the organization from a small staff of 10 to a globally recognized leader in swimming,” said Swimming Canada Past President Mary C. Lyne. Many of those staff have now gone on to be key industry leaders.
“In conjunction with expanding the business side, Ahmed worked with key staff and business, provincial, and government partners to redefine Canadian swimming as a global leader in Olympic and Paralympic sport. We are grateful for his contributions and wish him the best in his future endeavours.”
Swimming Canada Acting CEO Suzanne Paulins will continue to serve in this capacity, as she has since May 2023.
“The Board has complete confidence in the management team that Ahmed has built,” Lyne said.
The Board will review the organization’s needs to fulfill the remaining mandate of the Swimming Canada Strategic Plan 2021-2028, and the next quadrennial leading to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“Suzanne and the team are well positioned to continue to implement and support the organization and its key groups, and continue to manage the day-to-day operations as we lead into the next quad,” Lyne said.
SC bureaucrats are playing games and feed us with blah-blah-blah for so many years. Meanwhile, we keep losing young talents to US clubs and universities. Check how many age groups record holders and national champions are training at Canada. Barely any
Did he step down or was he pushed like Hinchey?
He’s been on-off-on-off the last several years. My guess would be that it was an “urged” resignation. Said differently, there was a financial package offered to step down.
Why is ballooning the staff seen as a positive. They have 7 senior Marketing and Communication staff, and a website that is usually a week behind in any relevant news. Case to point, Ahmed is still listed on the web site.
The website still has bios of folks on the “national team” who have left the sport over 5 years ago. From a Comms perspective, it reflects poorly to see this. As for pushing to get new water real estate built, they’ve been feckless at best.
It’s just an example of amateurs in charge that serve no one’s best interests (swimmers!)
Get some professionals in there to lead and while they’re ant it, build out a decent comms organization too.
HPCs are useless. Basically steal swimmers to justify their existence and harms local clubs when they lose top swimmers. To what benefit ultimately?
SC needs an enema.
feckless – lacking initiative or strength of character
For anyone else who didn’t know either
Edit: (Is “either” redundant there?)
I think it has more definitions that might be what was intended:
Weak, ineffective…
Regardless, the shoe fits!
Good riddance
Ignored obvious safe sport violations – while bringing forward grossly unfair safe sport violation penalties with no investigation- based on third party unverified exaggerated allegations. Ruined lives…then ran and hid with no apology….. thanks a lot
What did he do?
Other than ignoring Natation Gatineau and the coach being banned?
without breaching privacy. He suspended a swimmer nation wide for over 6 months after getting unverified third person sexual misconduct accounts without an investigation and without interviewing the accused or the accusers for 8 months long story short – after a year of fighting the system and tens of thousands of dollars later, – all allegations were found to be unfounded and the allegations were dropped. Meanwhile ruining the swimmers life and mental health .
Arrogant is what I remember. He pulled the “don’t you know who I am” card during Covid Trials. Meh