Tag: International Olympic Committee

The new International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry said  the organisation should “focus” on sport in order to preserve its neutrality.

 “We cannot be all things to all people. The Olympic Games and the values they represent are our greatest asset,” Coventry said at the opening of the IOC Summit in Milan ahead of the Winter Olympics that open on Friday.

Since her election in March last year, the 42-year-old Zimbabwean former swimmer has launched a wide-reaching consultation on the future of the Olympic movement, while remaining tight-lipped about her own opinion on political issues.

Under her predecessor Thomas Bach, the IOC expanded its scope of action, asserting itself as the leading authority among sports governing bodies in addressing environmental impact, human rights, the integrity of competitions, and the fight against violence in sport.

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 “Throughout the campaign and in many of our conversations since, I’ve heard the same message from so many of you: focus on our core. We are a sports organisation,” Coventry told the assembled IOC members. “We understand politics and we know we don’t operate in a vacuum. But our game is sport. That means keeping sport a neutral ground, a place where every athlete can compete without being held back by the politics or divisions of their governments.”

One of the working groups Coventry set up in June is looking at the highly-charged issue of the access to women’s events for transgender and intersex athletes.

On Tuesday, she made it clear her priority was “the future of the Olympic Games themselves, and in particular, the Olympic programme” to ensure “the Games remains inspiring for young people.”

 “This means finding the right balance between tradition and innovation. Between stability and flexibility,” Coventry said.

“It means we have to look at our sports, disciplines and events with fresh eyes to make sure that we are evolving with our times.”

The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics will feature an increase in women’s soccer teams from 12 to 16, while the men’s competition will be downsized from 16 to a dozen teams, the International Olympic Committee said.

The decision was part of a number of changes to the Olympic event programme with more mixed events across several sports and all team sports with at least the same number of women’s and men’s teams.

The IOC said the reason for the sharp increase in women’s soccer teams was the rapidly growing popularity of women’s team sports, especially in the United States, and that change in the competition format reflected that rapid growth.

“We wanted to do something to reflect that growth and equally with the United States being the home of the highest level of popularity of women’s football,” IOC sports director Kit McConnell told a press conference.

He said the IOC had discussed the issue with both LA Games organisers and world soccer’s governing body FIFA before going through with the changes.

The total number of players — men’s and women’s — would not change.

The United States, who will also host the 2026 men’s and the 2031 women’s World Cup, have won five Olympic gold medals in the women’s competition.

The men’s teams use mostly under-23 players at Olympic Games.

The LA Games will have a total of 351 medal events in all sports, 22 more than at Paris 2024 Olympics.

Several sports, including archery, athletics, golf and gymnastics will be adding new mixed team events, with the total number of athletes unchanged at 10,500.

The five sports proposed by the LA Games organising committee — baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash — will have an extra 698 quota places.

Thomas Bach focused on how peace is the essence of the Olympics but also how fragile it is in a speech at the opening of the final International Olympic Committee session he will preside over after 12 years in power.

The seven candidates vying to succeed the 71-year-old German as IOC president were in the audience gathered in a marquee as the rain poured at Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics.

Bach’s successor will be elected tomorrow (March 20)  but he will remain till June to ensure a smooth handover, something not accorded to him when he replaced Jacques Rogge in 2013.

“The Olympic Games and the values they represent have endured for millennia,” said Bach. “And yet, the course of human history reminds us of their fragility.”

Bach himself has had a turbulent ride including a Russian doping scandal at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 and the Covid pandemic.

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The latter forced the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games to 2021 and affected the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

Bach, speaking at a ceremony which mixed speeches by Greek dignitaries and entertainment including a rousing rendition of “Zorba The Greek”, said the rain was a good omen.

He said the heavy rain at the Paris 2024 Games opening ceremony was followed by a successful fortnight of competition.

“Nothing can go wrong,” he said drily, referring to the Session.

Bach’s more serious message was about the original Olympic Truce (the ekecheiria), how warring nations laid down arms for just over two weeks and how the concept was revived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, seen as the creator of the modern Games.

 “Then as now, the idea of promoting peace through sport was in stark contrast to the prevailing Zeitgeist,” said Bach.

“When we see today how Coubertin went against all the divisive and bellicose trends of his time, we can only admire even more his courage and audacity.”

Bach, who won fencing team gold in the 1976 Montreal Games, had to balance the strong emotions aroused over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when it came to Russian participation in Paris last year.

Ultimately some were permitted to – if they met certain conditions – but only as neutral athletes.

“The athletes even came together before the opening of the Olympic Games to make a moving call for peace,” he said. “This call for peace included athletes whose countries are presently divided by war and conflict.

“The athletes showed us how our world would be, if we all were to live in this Olympic spirit of peaceful co-existence.”

The International Olympic Committee has  provisionally recognised the recently created World Boxing as the body to oversee the sport at future Games.

The IOC severed links with the International Boxing Association (IBA), the long-standing ruling body of amateur boxing, over financial, governance and ethical concerns and took over the organisation of the sport at last year’s Paris Olympics.

The IBA is chaired by the Kremlin-linked Russian Umar Kremlev.

World Boxing was founded in 2023 and boasts 78 members led by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and Brazil.

IOC president Thomas Bach had warned that boxing’s national federations needed to find a new and “reliable” international partner if it wanted to ensure that the sport features on the programme at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

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The IOC in a statement recognising World Boxing as the sport’s amateur federation said the body “has demonstrated strong willingness and effort in enhancing good governance and implementation, to be compliant with the appropriate standards”.

World Boxing hailed the IOC’s decision as “an important milestone”.

 “This is a very significant day for everyone connected with the sport of boxing in the Olympic Movement,” the body’s president Boris van der Vorst said. “Keeping its place at the Olympic Games is absolutely critical to the future of our sport at every level.”

He added that the IOC’s provisional acceptance “takes us one step closer to our objective of seeing boxing restored to the Olympic programme”.

Kazakhstan’s former two-time unified world middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin heads World Boxing’s Olympic Commission and in that role has been liaising closely with the IOC.

 “Receiving provisional Olympic recognition from the IOC is an important achievement and demonstrates that our sport is on the right path,” said Golovkin, the silver medallist from the 2004 Athens Games.

Hope, experience, integrity and engaging with the youth of today were some of the messages the seven candidates bidding to become the next president of the International Olympic Committee delivered to their fellow members.

The seven are vying to convince a majority of the 100-plus members to elect them and succeed Thomas Bach as arguably the most powerful person in global sport, in a vote slated for March 20 in Costa Navarino, Greece.

The candidates all have impressive CVs; two of them, Briton Sebastian Coe and Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry, are Olympic gold medallists and successful administrators since they retired from competition.

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Bach steps down after a tumultuous 12-year tenure which has encompassed the Covid pandemic, the Russian doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games in 2014 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While Coventry would be the first woman and African to lead the Olympic movement, Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior is also seeking to make history by emulating his father of the same name who was president from 1980 to 2001.

“I hope it is neither a help nor a hindrance,” Samaranch said of his father, who transformed the IOC into a commercial powerhouse during his tenure. “He left office years ago and his legacy to me personally I appreciate very much.

“However, his recipes are not relevant now.”

Samaranch, though, has built up a wealth of experience within the movement.

It was something the 65-year-old Spaniard was keen to emphasise to the media after making his presentation behind closed doors to the members and where no questions were permitted.

“I have more than 25 years inside the organisation, experience on the revenues side and helped organise the Beijing Winter Games during Covid,” he said.

“So I have experience to deliver results under real pressure.

“I know the job and know how the administration works.”

Coventry swatted aside suggestions she was the favoured candidate of Bach, saying he respected all of them and he would not vote.

The two-time Olympic swimming gold medallist recalled how she had seen the impact her gold medal had on her compatriots in 2004.

 “I got back to Zimbabwe which was then very divisive and divided, but it sparked four days of peace,” said the 41-year-old.“I got to see the power of sport and that was why I was standing before (the members) today.”

Coventry faced questions over how she and her fellow members on the IOC Executive Board dealt with the controversy in the women’s boxing competition at the Paris Olympics last year when Algerian Imane Khelif and Taiwanese Lin Yu Ting won golds despite previously failing gender tests.

“As a female athlete you want to be able to walk onto a level playing field, always,” the Zimbabwean sports minister said. “It is our job as the IOC to ensure we are going to create that environment and not just create a level playing field but an environment that allows for every athlete to feel safe. That is our job.”

Coe for his part said he “felt very privileged and very honoured to be a small part of (the Olympic Movement).”

The ever-youthful looking 68-year-old two-time 1500 metres gold medallist said engaging with young people was of primary importance.

“The biggest challenge is for all of us to excite and engage with young people” he said. “That will be critical as it is that cohort that is ultimately going to be future sponsors, thought leaders and politicians.

“We need to create among that group of people a lifelong bond with sport.”

Frenchman David Lappartient, the head of the international cycling federation, has been touted as a dark horse.

With both the 2028 Olympics and the 2034 Winter Games taking part in the United States, the 51-year-old was keen to emphasise he would be firm with US president Donald Trump over the IOC’s status.

“Our autonomy is non-negotiable will be my message,” he said. “Autonomy and political neutrality.”

The United States is presently withholding funding from the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA), but Prince Feisal Al-Hussein defended them vigorously.

“It is not for me to comment on US policies,” said the Jordanian. “We (the IOC) are the institution who helped establish WADA and I think they have been doing a terrific job.”

Whilst the prince focused on integrity, for ski boss Johan Eliasch the message was one of hope.

“I bring hope that anything is possible,” said the 62-year-old Anglo-Swedish environmentalist. “In a world of division and disruption we have never needed hope more.”

Gymnastics federation president Morinari Watanabe of Japan, bidding like the prince to become the first Asian president of the IOC, stuck to his idea of an Olympics held across the five continents, which even he has said is “crazy.

Sebastian Coe says if he becomes president of the International Olympic Committee he wants a “reset” to give its members more of a voice.

Coe and the six other candidates to succeed Thomas Bach have  published their manifestoes and will make presentations to the IOC members in January before the election in March.

The British middle distance legend, who has been president of World Athletics since 2015, is happy to present himself as the candidate for reform.

He said he wants to “free up the voices of the (IOC) membership”.

 “There’s no shortage of talent (among the membership). But the question I ask myself as a member is – what input do I and other members have? And the reality of it is, there isn’t enough. There’s too much power in the hands of too few people,” Coe said in a call with international media.

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 “I am absolutely committed to the concept that the reset must be around sport… and at the epicentre has to be the athletes, whose voices must be heard.”

Coe’s decision to break ranks with other Olympic sports and pay bonuses to gold medallists in athletics at the Paris Games upset many inside the IOC, but he is unapologetic.

 “If you want a reset in sport, there has to be a reset in prioritisation of your budgets… if you want to innovate and make sport as exciting as possible.”

Anyway, he said, “I have never seen myself in anything I have done as an insider.”

Coe has also been an outspoken critic of how the IOC handled the gender row involving two women boxers, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, at the Paris Olympics.

Although both were barred from last year’s world championships – which were run by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA) – the IOC cleared them to compete in Paris and both won gold medals.

In his manifesto, Coe vows to “protect and promote the integrity of women’s sport” because it is “at a critical juncture”.

He adds: “I will advocate for clear, science-based policies that safeguard the female category. We will work closely with world-leading medical and educational institutions to increase research into female health, performance and exercise physiology.

 “We must navigate this with sensitivity and resolve to ensure current and future generations of women choose sport.”

The simultaneous awarding of the 2030 and 2034 Winter Olympics last month provides stability for the Olympic movement and a similar decision cannot be ruled out for future Games, the International Olympic Committee said.

France’s Alpine bid was picked for the 2030 Games while Salt Lake City, who hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, was chosen for 2034.

It was only the second time ever the IOC decided on two hosts at the same time, after selecting Paris and Los Angeles for the 2024 and 2028 Summer Games back in 2017.

In an interview with Reuters, Jacqueline Barrett, the IOC’s future Olympic Games hosts director, said having the choice of two strong proposals was what led to that decision.

“We did not set out to do a double award,” Barrett said. “If special circumstances arise to be able to seize opportunities… here we found ourselves in a situation with two great projects. And we thought we don’t want to let these projects go.

“It provides security for the future, for the athletes principally, the Olympic movement, the partners,” she added.

The IOC has now picked all Summer and Winter Games hosts until 2034, with Italy’s Milano-Cortina hosting the 2026 Winter edition and Brisbane staging the 2032 Summer Games.

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The IOC reformed the bidding process in recent years and instead of candidates openly competing for two years before an IOC vote, there is now a closed-door dialogue with interested parties before a preferred candidate is picked and then put to the vote to the IOC membership.

This has led to a sharply reduced cost for bidding, which in the past could go up to as much as $100 million and involved considerable planning and consultancy fees, scaring off a number of candidates.

In the case of 2030 and 2034 Games the IOC secured two more editions of the Olympics with climate change severely impacting the pool of potential winter candidates.

Following a report by the future hosts commission last year that identified the dangers to the winter editions due to a global rise in temperatures, the IOC is now considering various options in the way it will chose future hosts.

These include a potential rotation among winter sports hubs or the sharing of the Winter Games among countries, using existing venues.

“We are looking at grouping, sharing or looking at rotation. We are not limiting ourselves to one position,” she said.

Barrett said the IOC would also not rule out another double award for 2036 and 2040 should that opportunity present itself.

Istanbul, India, Indonesia and Chile’s Santiago are among those to have officially thrown their hats in the ring for 2036.