Holy hell, but Thomas Bach really is out to get Seb Coe.
Anywhere and everywhere you go in Olympic circles these days, it’s the talk, and what transpired Friday – calling 911, Bach all but sticking a figurative knife into Coe in broad daylight, anointing Hugh Robertson, head of the British Olympic Association, an individual IOC member – was just the latest as the wheel of IOC presidential succession politics turns.
For months, Bach has sought to downplay the what-comes-next phase for International Olympic Committee leadership. His term, in theory, ends in June 2025. An election is purportedly set for sometime next year. If there is an election.
Seb Coe this week in Rome at the European track and field championships
A number of developments in recent weeks have made plain that Bach, who is a politician of the highest order – meant with profound respect – has been lining things up.
And as of Friday, it’s now on.
At issue is nothing less than the near- and long-term direction of the Olympic movement.
This is not hyperbole.
Here, it is worth recalling the words of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th United States president. According to Robert Caro, the brilliant historian, LBJ once said, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”
It matters considerably who the president of the IOC is. He – or she – directs a brand that is among the world’s most recognized. The IOC’s four-year revenue for the period 2017-2021 was north of $7 billion.
As the Paris Games near, the IOC is—to use a favorite journalistic phrase—at an inflection point. The Olympic Games trade on hope and dreams, but they are essentially a television vehicle. Ratings are dimming, particularly among the key 18-to 34-year-old demographic.
Just to pick one from among several examples of the existential dread now percolating widely around the Olympic landscape, the International Skating Union.
Here was South Korea’s Kim Jae Youl at the federation’s convention in recent days in Las Vegas:
- Some 1.6 million Americans watched the world figure skating championships on NBC in March – but only 2.4% were under age 35.
- The federation projects million-dollar operating deficits every year through 2028.
- Sponsors “want to pay us less once contracts expire in 2026 and 2027,” Kim said.
This is not a recipe for success, and figure skating is the darling of the Winter Games.
With this in mind, we return to Bach, who campaigned for the presidency in 2013 on this catchy mantra: change or be changed.
The No. 1 issue confronting him in 2025: what to do next? After you’ve been at the top for 12 years, what? What change awaits — him? And — us? If any?
The Paris Games will be the first to see 50-50 gender parity on the field of play – as many women as men. Bach has long campaigned for this and has pressed, too, for women in positions of IOC leadership. It has long been his idea that the IOC, which has only had white males as presidents, needs to move beyond.
Five of the 15 on the policy-making executive board are women, including Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry – whom, it is clear to Olympic insiders, Bach has singled out for presidential consideration.
The IOC way is to speak in code. Consider the symbolism when, on June 5, Coventry, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, offered the core IOC anodyne principle: “The vision of the IOC is to build a better world through sport …”
Was that presidential-ish, or what?
Further: was Coventry’s appearance at the UN a sign — code to insiders — that Bach has decided that, come 2025, he really, truly is ready to step aside?
Coventry at the UN // OPGA78
Consider his legacy:
Bach in 2014 drove through a 40-point reform plan, dubbed Agenda 2020. A successor plan, Agenda 2020+5, came later.
Early on in his presidency, Bach asserted that the IOC had to do a better job of seeking partnerships with governments and, as appropriate, the world’s politicians. Who got athletes from North and South Korea to march in the opening ceremony, and then even play hockey together, at the 2018 Winter Games? Who, later in 2018, visited Kim Jong Un in Pyeongyang?
When the pandemic hit, Bach — big credit here — was ferocious in maintaining an unyielding commitment to seeing through the Games in Tokyo and Beijing.
In early 2022, the first foreign dignitary China’s Xi Jinping met face-to-face since the early days of the pandemic? Bach.
Meanwhile, Bach has seen to the appointments of nearly 70 of the roughly 100 IOC members. He has also stripped those members of essentially all their responsibilities.
The main thing an IOC member did was get to vote, after a freewheeling campaign that went around the world, for the next city to host a Games. That all ended in 2019. It’s 100% the case that significant numbers of Western democracies were voting down the Games at the ballot box. Bach understood this. The system as it was, he said, was producing “too many losers.”
Now the cities are chosen the way two corporate entities might do a deal; the members, when the terms and conditions are all spelled out, then ratify the choice.
The IOC president on Monday with Tony Estanguet of Paris 2024 and students at Epinettes School in Paris’ 17th arrondissement // IOC / Greg Martin
In place of the members doing, you know, stuff, IOC staff numbers have swelled to many hundreds. The IOC now operates out of a new headquarters, Olympic House, on the shores of Lake Geneva in Lausanne, which opened in June 2019.
After a three-Games swing through Asia – 2018, 2020/1, 2022 – and the pandemic, the IOC is counting on Paris to reignite fan/TV interest. It is entirely unclear if it will do, and particularly uncertain if the 18-to-34 set gives the same damn their parents and grandparents do.
Already one top-tier sponsor, Toyota, has announced it is done after Paris. Two more, at least, are believed to be exiting, too.
The Japanese news agency Kyodo, citing sources, said Toyota was unhappy with the way the IOC used its money. The news agency, quoting the sources, said the funds were “not used effectively to support athletes and promote sports.”
Corruption issues riddled the Games in Rio in 2016, and in Tokyo in 2020.
The Russians – doping issues since Sochi 2014, the launch of the war in Ukraine in 2022 – have for years bedeviled Bach and those he trusts. The International Boxing Association, headed by Russian Umar Kremlev? Kicked out of the Olympics.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait, instrumental in getting Bach elected in 2013? Talk about getting the knife. In May, the sheik got himself banned for 15 years from all Olympic activities over a court case in Switzerland.
Coe, president of World Athletics, has announced a plan to pay $50,000 to gold medalists in Paris. Bach disagrees with this and has said so many times.
Change or be changed?
We live in a time of disruption, and Coe is riding that wave. Evidence: the NCAA’s century-old model of “amateurism” is now toast.
Their positions on what to do about the Russians for the Paris Games differ. The IOC has said each federation can decide what to do about ‘neutral’ athletes. Coe has been at the forefront of saying absolutely no Russians. This column has been on record repeatedly as saying the Russians should be at the Games — you can’t only have the people at the party that you like. Coe and I disagree about the federation’s position.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that World Athletics — which used to be known as the IAAF — introduced the concept of the ‘neutral’ athlete. It was Coe who found a way through by saying, in effect, let’s not penalize clean athletes in a tainted system – meaning through the doping challenges. The IOC in the first instance opposed the concept, and then co-opted it.
The DSD issues? World Athletics has been at the forefront of seeking to preserve the female category.
The creation of the Athletic Integrity Unit? Everyone knows it is the gold standard when it comes to anti-doping and other corruption issues; the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency chairs the AIU.
Now Coe is presenting, for Budapest 2026, the equivalent of a world championships, a new model – giving the host city all the tickets, local sponsorships and local broadcast. The prize pot is $10 million. The athletes can build their own content and profiles; they can even take their own social media teams with them there.
It’s all unashamedly aimed at – television.
Change or be changed.
The relationship and, in effect, political tension between Bach and Coe dates to 1981, when the two first came together to public view, at the IOC assembly in Baden-Baden, West Germany, at what would ultimately spark the first IOC athletes’ commission.
Coe has been IAAF/WA president since 2015. Though track and field is the No. 1 sport at the Games, he wasn’t made an IOC member, however, until 2020 – and his membership is tied to his federation presidency.
This is why what happened Friday with Robertson, the BOA boss, is so transparent.
The IOC nominated four people Friday to become individual members. Three are women; all three are outstanding former athletes. The fourth is Robertson.
At one time, the British government had been a forceful if not leading critic of the IOC’s Russia policy. Earlier this year, as reported in the British press, the government, supported by the BOA, pulled a 180, expressing support for the IOC policy. Now Robertson finds himself nominated for IOC membership.
Who was not nominated for individual membership as a British citizen?
Coe, who ran the 2012 London Games – and, later, the BOA. Not to mention his four Olympic medals. And other achievements.
This is not, repeat not, to suggest that Coe ought to run, will run, should win, will win, is the best candidate to replace Bach – none of that.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., should he declare, would be a formidable candidate.
Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. at the 2022 Winter Games — he chaired the IOC coordination commission for Beijing 2022 // WeChat account, China University of Geosciences
Others surely are considering running, too.
The last few weeks, however, capped by Robertson’s nomination, have seen Bach – without ever saying so, a mark of high-level political maneuvering – singling out Coe for special focus.
To that end, consider this scenario:
At the IOC assembly last fall in India, some members suggested Bach ought to stay on.
To do so, however, would require a change in the Olympic Charter. Bach is a man of the Charter.
Another four years? Too much to do with the Charter. The president right now gets a first eight-year term and then another four.
What if, though, in the aftermath of COVID, given the financial uncertainties and the unsettled situation in so many places around our fragile world – you can imagine Bach saying this – the executive board would propose Bach stay on for, oh, two years, you know, the two years the IOC more or less lost to the pandemic?
That could be – finessed.
Wow, two years would time Coe out. What a coincidence.
Here’s the gamble, and back to LBJ. He assuredly understood politics. Why leave Coe out there for two years – with even less to lose?