Behind closed doorways at a resort in Greece, with the cameras turned off, Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) members will select a brand new president on Thursday on the group’s 144th session.
The winner among the many seven candidates will lead the most important sporting group on the earth starting in June when president Thomas Bach, who has held the highest job since 2013, steps apart.
One of many greatest gadgets on the brand new president’s to-do checklist seemed to be checked off earlier this week, when the IOC announced a new U.S. media rights deal with NBC.
The deal, price $3 billion, will final via at the least 2036, when Salt Lake Metropolis will host the Winter Olympics. The U.S. rights deal is a significant income for the IOC.
However they’re going to have loads of different points to sort out, from navigating worldwide diplomacy and battle, a warming local weather, and problems with sport integrity and athlete security, to creating certain the Olympics are accessible to a youthful era extra more likely to flip to Tik Tok earlier than switching on a TV.
Here is a preview of what to anticipate, who’s working, and why Canadians ought to care:
The candidates
Seven persons are vying for the presidency, with many seeing Sebastian Coe, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. and Kirsty Coventry because the three frontrunners.
Coe, the World Athletics president, four-time Olympic medallist and London 2012 organizer, has a platform centred round participating younger folks, rising transparency, strengthening the anti-doping system and prioritizing athletes’ bodily, monetary and psychological welfare.
“The most important problem confronted by the Worldwide Olympic Committee isn’t any totally different and it’s not distinctive from any nationwide Olympic committee, any sporting group, any membership, non-public or public: it’s how do you proceed to excite and interact with younger folks?” Coe instructed reporters throughout a short question-and-answer session with media in January.
“And the way do you make the most of, optimize, totally, the usage of cutting-edge expertise?”
Coe raised eyebrows when, forward of the Summer season Olympics in Paris final yr, he introduced that gold-medal winners in athletics would get a $50,000 US bonus. Some criticized the move as going against the spirit of the Olympics.
Coe mentioned he’ll prioritize athletes’ “monetary well-being” and can be certain “their contributions are rewarded pretty.” He is additionally promised to create applications that may see athletes get a chunk of “the industrial rewards they assist generate.”
Zimbabwe’s Coventry is barely the second lady to ever run for the IOC presidency. If elected, she can even be the primary president from Africa. As a swimmer, Coventry competed at 5 Olympic Video games, incomes seven medals.
Some see her as Bach’s most well-liked candidate, although Coventry downplayed that when a reporter requested about it in January.
“All of us have an excellent relationship with him,” she mentioned. “I believe he’s being very reasonable to all of us at this time limit.”
She additionally emphasised transparency and modernization in her platform, and has been open about a number of the distinctive challenges African athletes face. The continent has by no means hosted an Olympic Video games, and Coventry is probably the most adorned Olympian from Africa.
“We have to discover extra methods of immediately impacting and getting income to athletes earlier than they develop into Olympians,” Coventry instructed reporters in January.
“In my journey, it was simple to get sponsorship as soon as I would received a medal. It was attending to that medal that was robust.”
If Samaranch’s identify sounds acquainted, it is as a result of his namessake father led the IOC from 1980 to 2001. However lots has modified since his father’s presidency.
“Keep in mind he joined the Olympic motion greater than 60 years in the past,” Samaranch mentioned about his late father.
The youthful Samaranch has been an IOC member for greater than 20 years, together with seven years as vice-president. That prompted a reporter to ask him in January what sort of modifications he expects to make as president that he could not make throughout so a few years on the IOC’s govt board.
He described Bach’s reign as filled with “threats” and “problems.” Bach’s time period included Russia’s warfare on Ukraine and doping scandal, plus a world pandemic. Samaranch mentioned change might want to come even sooner sooner or later.
The remainder of the sector consists of Worldwide Ski and Snowboard Federation president Johan Eliasch, Worldwide Biking Union president David Lappartient, Jordan’s Prince Feisal Al Hussein and Morinari Watanabe, who leads the Worldwide Gymnastics Federation.
Watanabe’s platform gives what often is the most radical proposal of all: staging the Video games in 5 cities over 5 continents on the identical time to create a 24-hour international occasion. In response to Watanabe, that would scale back the price of internet hosting and will assist convey the 5 continents collectively.
Who casts a vote?
The unique membership of the IOC, which incorporates former and present athletes, heads of Olympic committees and sporting federations from the world over, and even some royalty — King Frederik X of Denmark and Monaco’s Prince Albert II, to call simply two — are tasked with deciding on the subsequent president.
A lot of that course of has occurred at the hours of darkness. Candidates every had quarter-hour to current to members at an event in Switzerland in January, however these displays have been closed to the general public and never allowed to be filmed. Candidates briefly answered questions from the media after the displays.
Likewise, the vote will occur by secret poll, starting round 4 p.m. native time (10 a.m. ET) in Greece on Thursday.
Just one Canadian is a voting member of the IOC: Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) president Tricia Smith. She instructed CBC Sports activities the brand new president will play a key position in modernizing the Olympics, together with digital transformation and youth engagement.
“This can be a second to seek out new methods to lean into the distinctive energy sport has to convey us collectively, which feels extra vital than ever proper now,” Smith mentioned in a written assertion.
As for what the COC is in search of within the subsequent president, Smith mentioned the IOC wants a “chief who understands and embodies the constructive values of sport, stands up for integrity, good governance, and sustainability, monetary and environmental, whereas advancing a secure and inclusive sporting setting worldwide.”
The problems
A warming local weather often is the greatest problem the subsequent president will face, and it is one thing 400 athletes from throughout the globe urged the candidates to prioritize in a letter released on Friday.
After devastating wildfires, Los Angeles is within the highlight because the host of the 2028 Summer season Olympics. Getting there can even imply coping with the often-unpredictable U.S. President Donald Trump. Assembly with Trump must be excessive on the subsequent IOC president’s to-do checklist, Samaranch told The Associated Press last week.
Lappartient, meanwhile, told Reuters last week that he would meet with Trump, too, however would stress to the American president that the IOC’s autonomy must be revered.
Through the one media availability involving all seven candidates, many have been requested about welcoming Russia again to the Olympics and what situations would must be met for that to occur.
Eliasch mentioned the neutral-athlete program that allowed Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete, after a screening course of that eradicated athletes who supported the warfare towards Ukraine or the navy, labored effectively.
Al Hussein mentioned he’d wish to see the entire world on the Olympics.
“Proper now, my understanding is the exclusion of Russian athletes is predicated on a violation of the Olympic constitution,” he mentioned. “As president of the IOC, my position and duty is to uphold the Olympic constitution, and so long as no person is in violation, then there isn’t a motive for sanctions. I’d very very like to discover a mechanism the place we are able to reintroduce it. The world is stronger once we are all collectively.”
Some, like Coe, emphasised the necessity to “safeguard the feminine class” in his platform. As World Athletics president, his group banned transgender athletes in 2023 and then went a step further this year, proposing modifications that may prolong the identical guidelines to feminine athletes who’ve larger testosterone ranges.
Coventry has taken the same place. The one feminine candidate instructed reporters the IOC must have clear insurance policies and all athletes ought to really feel secure on the taking part in subject.
Lappartient addressed the difficulty via the lens of range in his platform.
“It’s a advanced matter that should be handled rationally to strike the fitting steadiness between the necessity to respect human rights and the duty to make sure truthful competitors. We can’t ignore what feminine athletes are saying, however our choices should even be grounded on strong scientific proof.”
Shaping the way forward for sport
The election takes place hundreds of kilometres away, and might really feel fairly distant for individuals who tune into the Olympics each two years.
However the IOC president will form how the Olympics appear and feel over the subsequent decade, and the choices they make might decide the way forward for sport in Canada and past.
That is why Philippe Marquis, a Canadian freestyle skier who competed on the 2014 and 2018 Olympics, thinks this election is a vital one. The following president will set the tone, he mentioned, and can resolve the whole lot from who can compete on the largest stage to how the Olympics will navigate a altering and warming local weather.
“[For] everybody, whether or not they’re a high-performance athlete or simply leisure, I believe sport performs an important and essential place in folks’s thoughts, folks’s coronary heart,” mentioned Marquis, who chairs the COC’s athletes’ fee.
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