As he approaches his final week in the sporting world’s top job, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach is feeling relaxed.
When a new IOC president is elected Thursday, and Bach formally leaves the role in June, it will be with a “clear conscience,” the outgoing boss told reporters this week inside a Greek resort where IOC members will pick his successor.
“It’s the period during all my presidency where I do not have an existential problem for the Olympic movement or the Olympic Games on my desk,” Bach, who has held the top job in global sport since 2013, said on Monday.
Those challenges have ranged from a global pandemic impacting two separate Olympic Games, war and conflict, and a Russian doping scandal that emerged from the 2014 Games in Sochi. Bach’s handling of the latter, in particular, drew criticism, with Russian athletes still able to compete at the Games as neutral athletes.
But Bach leaves on a high note after completing negotiations for an NBC media rights deal worth $3 billion US , and a Games in Paris that felt like the return of the spirit of the Olympics.
Bach said he didn’t think his successor would be facing as much uncertainty as he did when he started his mandate more than a decade ago.
But that person does have a long list of challenges to confront, beginning with climate change. Extreme heat and warming temperatures threaten the future of both the Summer and Winter Olympics, something more than 400 athletes, including more than 20 Canadians, emphasized last week in a letter to IOC presidential candidates.
‘Our political neutrality has to be respected’
Bach advised his successor to keep athletes at the heart of the Olympic movement and to focus on unity. Doing that requires making sure the more than 200 national Olympic committees are treated equally and the IOC remains politically neutral, he said.
Without that, Bach said the Olympics would become “another tool for politics to divide this world even more.”
WATCH | A look at the front-runners that could succeed Bach:
Karissa Donkin is on the ground in Greece for the election of the next president of the International Olympic Committee, and explains who the front-runners are that could succeed Thomas Bach.
In an interview that aired on CNN today, Bach was asked about whether a political leader should be trying to influence sporting regulations, pointing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s order banning transgender women and girls from competing in female categories of sport. It’s something the next IOC president will have to navigate as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympics.
“World leaders are free to make any comment about everything,” Bach told CNN. “What we say is we will need to have a dialogue and then in this dialogue, our autonomy and our political neutrality has to be respected.”
Bach also told CNN he believes much of the controversy around two female boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, at the Olympics in Paris was sparked by a Russian disinformation campaign. He said the attacks began after the IOC suspended the International Boxing Association, run by Russian Umar Kremlev, over financial, governance and judging issues.
He stressed again that neither Khelif nor Lin are transgender.
“They have been born as women,” Bach said on CNN. “They have been raised as women. They have been competing as women. They have lost bouts and they have won bouts. They have even competed in the Olympic Games in Tokyo without any noise.”
On Monday, the IOC’s executive board approved including boxing on the 2028 Olympic programme after recognizing a new governing body, World Boxing. IOC members will have to sign off on that decision this week.
Election set for Thursday
The IOC opened its 144th session on Tuesday at Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics more than 2,800 years ago.
In his address at the opening ceremony, Bach described it as “a sacred pilgrimage to our ancient past” and “a manifestation of our faith in the future.”
That future will come into clearer focus on Thursday afternoon local time (10 a.m. ET), when about 100 IOC members will begin voting for the next president. Only one Canadian — Tricia Smith, the president of the Canadian Olympic Committee — will vote.
“This presidency will play a role in modernizing the Olympic movement, including continued digital transformation, youth engagement, and long-term financial stability building on the Olympic charter’s principles of non-discrimination, fair play, and solidarity,” Smith said in a written statement to CBC Sports.
“This is a moment to find new ways to lean into the unique power sport has to bring us together, which feels more important than ever right now.”
The election process has led to questions about transparency. Each candidate’s platform is public, but their one and only presentation to IOC members happened in private and could not be filmed.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, one of the candidates vying for the top job, told reporters in January that the process should be reviewed.
“It’s really important that the membership fully understand the nature, the style, the people that are putting themselves forward,” Coe said. “That can only be done with personal interaction.”
The vote itself also happens behind closed doors by secret ballot. The next president will be announced once a candidate achieves the majority of votes.
Seven people are on the ballot. Coe, along with long-time IOC executive board member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. and decorated Olympian Kirsty Coventry, are seen by many as the front-runners.
You can read more about the candidates, the people electing them, and the issues at stake here.