The International Olympic Committee under president Thomas Bach has sought to work closely with the United Nations. Particularly when it comes to the rights and roles of women and girls.
So it was all the more noteworthy that the UN’s “Special Rapporteur” for, among other matters, women in sports took a plain shot Tuesday at the IOC for the controversy that erupted at the Paris Games in women’s boxing.
PARIS – As most everyone knows, George Washington is the first president of the United States of America.
One of the stories American schoolkids learn about Washington is how he decided to stop being president at the end of his second four-year term. The new country had broken away from Britain. There they had a king. The king is king until he dies. In this new country, Washington said, things were going to be different.
In 21st century jargon, we would call what Washington did an expression of best practices and world-class governance.
Speaking Saturday before the fuil membership of the International Olympic Committee, president Thomas Bach, nearing the end of his second term, pulled a George Washington. He said he would step down next year, at the end of his mandated 12 years.
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.
MUMBAI – International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s manta, change or be changed, is apt.
The challenge facing the IOC, the Olympic Games, indeed the wider Olympic movement, is both fundamental and existential. All of it is a 19th-century construct. Owing to broadcast television, U.S.-driven corporate sponsorship and, to some extent, Cold War rivalries, it found its footing in the 20th century. Now it is struggling to find a way in our 21st century.
Television ratings are down. The sponsor program needs a far-reaching re-do. Change is not an option. It’s a must. It’s why, as part of his speech Saturday night here opening the IOC’s 141st session, Bach for the first time made extensive reference to the possibilities of artificial intelligence and, too, announced the IOC would study the creation of an “Olympic Esports Games.”
Change is one thing. But the IOC is furiously slapping at different currents, trying to find direction, not least about its own rules and about whether Bach or someone else ought to be in charge come 2025, when Bach, in theory, is due to step down.
Is the Olympic movement at an inflection point?
Let’s face it, the Games are prone to strong sentiments and strong statements. It’s easy to get swept away by the passion and the emotion that the Olympics evoke – after all, that’s the source of their appeal.
But if that question has ever been worth asking, perhaps it’s now.
This week, on September 10, it will be a full 10 years since Thomas Bach was elected president of the International Olympic Committee.
A shockwave of epic proportions boomed out Thursday across the Olympic world.
The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, opted to take on – with the obvious goal of taking out – Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, the kingmaker once and perhaps again.
The obvious question: why? The follow-on: will Bach succeed? The IOC president is nothing if not intelligent and calculated. Then again, so is the sheikh.
For nearly 10 years, since he was elected president of the International Olympic Committee, it has been a rare thing for Thomas Bach to be told no.
And for good reason. Despite his many vocal critics, almost all of whom have little to no idea how the IOC or the Olympic movement works in the real world, history will likely record Bach as the most consequential IOC president other than Juan Antonio Samaranch. Perhaps even more so.
Bach’s mantra is simple: change or be changed. He has sought to drag a traditional, conservative, European-oriented institution into the 21st century. He can claim considerable success, implementing major reforms, including the end of the corruption-plagued host-city elections.
Thus what happened Saturday, at an election for the presidency of the Olympic Council of Asia, amounts to the first signs of what may well be not just restlessness but pushback if not potent insurrection in the Olympic movement – one year ahead of Paris 2024 and two years before Bach is due to step down as president.
So much of our world is mired in inhumanity.
The west seemingly can only see Ukraine. But the past 10 years have brought a paradigm shift, one that is now all but hiding in plain sign — one about which the International Olympic Committee, to its credit, recognized and, for once, has been ahead of trend.
If only the most vocal, the most strident, politicians in the west would wake up and see what is right there.
If only the western world would, as an NPR report in December acknowledged, devote perhaps more than 1% of its media coverage to what’s what.
If only these politicians and the media could confront, would at least acknowledge, the bias and the flat-out racism. Because all human beings deserve a common measure of dignity. Everyone.
As the president of the International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, said in opening arguably that sport’s preeminent tour event, the Paris Grand Slam, over the weekend, “War and politics cannot divide sport and cannot divide us. Sport and religion bring the most important values of society, which promote principles of respect, solidarity and peace. Sport is the last bridge, which today in the world’s confrontations can be a messenger for peace and unity and can work for reconciliation.”
I was in touch by text message late last week with Alex Gilady. And now he’s gone. He died Wednesday, in London, of cancer. As is the way in Jewish tradition, his funeral was scheduled as soon as could be, at noon Friday, back in Israel, in Ramat HaSharon, near Tel Aviv.
Alex lived life. When our time comes, how many of us can say this? Alex loved hanging out in London (especially at Wimbledon): he thoroughly enjoyed the late summer along Spain’s Costa Brava; he inevitably managed to find something about every place he was, wherever it was. To be with him was to understand that life is indisputably, unequivocally for living. Dressed impeccably? Inevitably. A good bottle of red? Sure. A story, a discussion, maybe even a point or three to contest? Why not?
With him closes a chapter of history. His passing marks an occasion of deep, profound sadness.
For me, the sadness is particularly personal.
The International Olympic Committee this week moved to isolate Russia, including Russian athletes, from international sport.
The reason for this move is clear. It’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24. So there is no mistake, no equivocating about language — it’s, from the words of the IOC’s news release itself, the “current war in Ukraine.” It’s the war. The war puts the Olympic movement, the release said, in a “dilemma.” The statement uses the word “dilemma” four times.
To be clear, what Russia has done in launching this war is horrific and reprehensible. The IOC also took the step of stripping the Russian president, Vladimir Putin — and two others, including the head of the Sochi 2014 Games, Dmitry Chernyshenko — of the highest Olympic prize, the Olympic Order. That’s entirely appropriate.
Is what the IOC did in moving Monday to ban Russian athletes an act of moral leadership? The right thing to do? In the west, overwhelmingly, the answer is easy. Yes.
