The International Olympic Committee is due this week to hold its policy-making executive board meeting. it comes more or less with six months to go until July 23, when the Tokyo Olympics are due to commence. To make those six months feel all the more real: that’s 26 Fridays.
In March, the IOC president, Thomas Bach, is going to be re-elected to a four-year term. He has served eight already, once again more or less. These last four will be his last in the office.
Starting with this board meeting, Bach has a unique opportunity. These first eight years have been marked by a succession of crises, some unforeseeable — the Russian doping scandal, the organizational disaster that was Rio 2016, the almost-didn’t-happen PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games.
This space has many times been critical of Bach. His Agenda 2020, for instance? Not much there there. All the same, throughout these first eight years, and this is difficult indeed for Bach’s many critics — some voluble indeed — to comprehend, he has shown genuine leadership. Now he must do more. His legacy is at stake. He has the chance, starting now, to define that legacy rather than let others define it for him.
Starting with this particular board meeting, Bach has the distinct opportunity to begin stamping himself in history as more than IOC president, as more than executive seeking to modernize and perhaps even radicalize a traditional and conservative global institution.
He can show himself — indeed, reveal himself — to be a humanitarian.
IOC president Thomas Bach in photo released for his New Year’s 2021 message // IOC / Greg Martin
At a once-in-a-century moment, when we are all being asked to do more, he needs to do more. Indeed, it requires the grit of a champion — in his case, an Olympic champion.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, IOC president from 1980-2001, transformed the Olympic movement into what we know it as today, making it — along with Peter Ueberroth — a financial colossus and then breaking with the past to make the Olympics accessible not only to professionals (basketball, hockey) but to the likes of snowboarders.
Jacques Rogge, president from 2001-13, stabilized the movement after the Salt Lake City bid scandal.
Already — Bach hasn’t even been re-elected yet — his successors are jockeying to succeed him. Let’s not be naive. And here they come: Nawal el-Moutawakel, the Moroccan IOC insider, another Olympic champion, a former vice president who is back on the executive board, gave an interview that was posted Monday to the French-language website Francs Jeux under the headline, “The future of the Olympic movement will be female.”
To her credit, and Bach’s, Olympic champions are not known for self-doubt. In a crisis, this is a quality worth some merit.
Bach came to the office understanding — a lesson Samaranch taught well — that the Olympic movement needs financial stability. One of the first things he did was sign up NBC through 2032.
That freed him to concentrate on the vision thing, on innovation. Thus Agenda 2020, ratified by the membership in December 2014.
The problem with Agenda 2020, the self-styled reform plan that Bach and the IOC have touted time and again, is that it really has done little except launch the Olympic Channel. Any bid-city reforms are not the result of Agenda 2020 but referenda in western countries that have depicted the IOC, time and again, as the establishment wickedly spending taxpayer money for a three-week party.
To be honest, in the age of Covid-19, Agenda 2020 seems quaint. It should be left at the New Year’s Eve non-party. The one that didn’t happen — it got postponed. Did I say that?
Now comes Tokyo 2020, postponed by a year. The original budget for that three-week party was set at $7.8 billion. Now it’s officially in the $15 billion range, unofficially $25 billion, maybe $30 billion.
A little reality check. When there were bid-city contests, the IOC would conduct a poll in and around a city seeking a Games. The IOC would demand that the poll numbers be at least — at least — 60 percent “we want,” or else the city might as well give it up. TBH 70 percent yes was what the IOC wanted to see.
Now polls in Japan suggest that it’s 80 percent the wrong way — 80 percent don’t want the Games.
That’s not good.
On to the trial balloon that was floated last week from the Times of London, in which a Japanese government insider purported to suggest that it had already been decided that cancellation was the thing — a report that predictably sparked global media panic akin to watching dogs go around in circles chasing their tails.
The IOC’s response was equally predictable: no Plan B.
That’s just not credible.
As Bach has said repeatedly, the Games is the most complex event in the world.
If we have learned anything over the past 48 or 52 weeks, or whatever, we live in a world of contingencies.
Thus — and particularly since the IOC has just signed a new corporate sponsor, Allianz, an insurance entity — it would be corporate malpractice if there wasn’t a Plan B. And C. And D. All the way to Z.
Come on. Who doesn’t have a Plan B for what they’re going to eat for breakfast? What, no eggs in the fridge? OK, oatmeal.
The only man on Planet Earth who perhaps afforded himself the luxury of no Plan B is a newly ensconced resident of Mar-a-Lago. But — different column. Orange is the new flamingo pink in Palm Beach!
As Bach said last March amid the postponement, and Rob Livingstone of GamesBids.com gets the tip here for posting this reminder to Twitter recently: “Of course we are a responsible organization, this is why we have this joint taskforce which is having regular meetings and we are addressing any issues which may arise. But we are not speculating on any kind of future developments.”
In another, more transparent moment, Bach said recently:
“We are working to prepare for all the potential scenarios we may face in July-August this year and this is a wide range,” all but confirming there are, in fact, a wide range of Plan Bs. “So we are putting together a huge toolbox of measures and then we will decide at the appropriate time which of the tools we need to address the situation.
“… So everybody can rest assured our first priority is a safe and secure Olympic Games and when we are talking about the measures there can be no taboo for securing safe and secure Olympic Games for every participant.”
The upshot: there are going to be Games come hell or high water.
The issue is not whether Games might be impractical. Any and all impracticalities can and will be solved.
The only issue is whether the virus renders a Games impossible.
Absent that, they’re on.
At this point, we — all of us — are way beyond impractical. The entire notion of putting a Games may well be impractical. But we need to do it. We need the uplift and the reset. It will prove a true point of human transition, a true opportunity to move beyond.
To celebrate the Olympic values: excellence, friendship, respect.
Bach would do himself right — surrounded by the sharpest Plan B-ers ever, the best minds on the planet — simply by being himself. His entire life, his career, his sense of self, his championship moments, his pure raison d’être, all of it has prepared him for this moment.
He doesn’t have to run for Olympic office again. He can’t. He’s free to do right by it and have It do right by him.
So — again, after 48 or 52 weeks, or whatever, and it will be another half-year by the time July gets here, the world needs those Olympic values more perhaps than even it knows. This is what Bach should be preaching to the collective, all-hopeful, attentive choir.
It humanizes him, for one thing, and it speaks to all of our humanity.
Assuming Tokyo happens, meanwhile, six or so months later, the Beijing Winter Games are due to take place. The IOC put out a statement in which it disclosed that Bach held a phone call Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping that ranged from the “close cooperation between the IOC and Chinese authorities with regard to health matters” and Xi’s “cooperation” to ensure that both the Tokyo and Beijing Games will be “safe and successful.”
Oh, and this: “… the two leaders discussed all other matters which are important to the success of the Olympic Games and the long-term mutual cooperation.” This does not take a genius to parse. Just read the news. Understand, too, what might — or not — be “important” to the success of the Games.
To that end:
Bach would do himself, and the waiting, watching world a huge favor, starting this week, by being more transparent than not about what’s what. The world wants Games. It seeks not just his leadership. It seeks his empathy and understanding.
It wants, desperately, his — humanity.