On Saturday evening, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach announced that he would not put forward his candidacy in the next elections for the head of the organization. The Sport correspondent discusses whether this will help Russia return to the Olympic movement.
Saturday sensation
Thomas Bach's statement came as a surprise for two reasons. Firstly, the IOC Ethics Commission had recommended that he not announce whether he would run for a third term as president until after the Olympic Games in Paris — and although they are nearing the finish line, they are still formally ongoing. It was said that Bach could issue a communiqué one of the days after the closing ceremony, or do so at an extraordinary session, which would be organized via video conference.
Secondly, everything hinted that the current IOC president would agree to extend his powers. This could be judged, among other things, by the heated speeches in support from many IOC members at previous meetings and hints from Bach himself.
However, the former fencer, unexpectedly taking the floor on the last day of the IOC session, which had been sleepily rolling towards its closure with the performance of various formalities such as the swearing in of new members, pierced everyone with the admission that he was not going to run for a third term — in connection with which, accordingly, there would be no need to change the Olympic Charter, which limits the powers of the IOC president to one period of eight years and a second period of four.
«The Ethics Commission has given me permission to announce my situation today,» Bach began. «Many of you have asked me to agree to a change in the Olympic Charter and to extend my mandate. My first reaction was to express loyalty to the Olympic Charter and my respect and gratitude to you. I have personally discussed this situation with many of you, and many conversations have touched me. As a result, after deep reflection and discussions with my family, I have come to the conclusion that I should not extend my mandate as IOC President. We must uphold the high standards of governance that we have set, and first and foremost I, as President, must do so.»
At that moment, silence reigned in the hall, which was broken by a storm of applause only when Bach interrupted his speech because he began to choke with tears. However, the head of the IOC managed to pull himself together after a few seconds and tried to explain why he made such a decision. «I was one of those who supported term limits for the presidency when we discussed the provisions of the Olympic Charter,» he recalled. «And today I sincerely believe that after 12 years of my leadership, a change of leader will benefit the Olympic movement.»
«Change or be changed,» Bach recalled the slogan that has been regularly heard at International Olympic Committee events in recent years. «We have tried to follow this mantra. And it concerns not only legal and administrative issues, but goes beyond them — into the realm of politics, geopolitics, social and economic problems, the relevance of the IOC in our divided world.»And here Bach may have surprised those who see him as a supporter of only one side in this very «divided world.» «We must adapt to the changing world order and establish a firm dialogue with the emerging and growing political forces,» he continued. «In particular, with the increasingly powerful Global South. To do this, we must show that for the Olympic movement there is no «Global North» or «Global South.» We must be a truly global organization, we must reflect the diversity of the world.»
Disappointment of a former «friend of Russia»
After this, Bach admitted with a sad smile that he was «not the best captain» in the tsunami of digital technology and artificial intelligence that has engulfed the modern world. But perhaps it is precisely in the previous thesis that the reason why the IOC President decided to leave his post is encrypted. In a situation where the President was required to have a strong political will as a helmsman in order to keep the ship of his organization in the fairway of real neutrality and keep sport outside of politics, the IOC followed the lead of the West and became one of its instruments in the global fight against Russia. And it is safe to say that with the above statement about the need to adopt a new world order, the German official admits his disappointment that this happened.
We should not forget that Bach became the president of the IOC, as Western media wrote, also thanks to the support of our country. As well as the fact that after the Olympic Games in Sochi, Bach was awarded the Order of Honor, which has not yet been revoked. The head of the IOC repeatedly met with the Russian leadership, which greatly infuriated the same Western media, and even received the stamp of a “friend of Russia” from them.
In addition, after the doping scandal around Russian sports that broke out in 2016, connected with the revelations of the former head of the Moscow laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov, Bach managed to restrain the radicals who demanded the complete disqualification of Russian athletes from the Olympic Games. The Russian team competed at the Olympics in 2016 under its own flag, and at the Games of 2018, 2021 and 2022 in a neutral status, which was a pure formality compared to the current one.
But Bach failed to cope with the political pressure from the West after February 2022. Then the IOC Executive Committee issued a cynical recommendation not to allow Russian athletes to participate in international competitions, allegedly out of concern for their own safety — which untied the hands of all federations that were under the influence of political forces unfriendly to Russia. And there were most of them. While truly professional sports organizations like tennis associations and the overseas NHL ignored the IOC recommendations, in almost all major Olympic sports our athletes were suspended from international tournaments.
And against those organizations where Russian influence has historically been strong, the IOC unleashed a “cold war.” In the fight he forced all the leaders to be excluded from the list of candidates for participation in the Paris Olympics. And the International Boxing Association (IBA), headed by Russian Umar Kremlev, was completely deprived of recognition — an echo of which was the scandal with female boxers who failed the gender test, which overshadowed truly bright episodes of pure sport at the Games.
There were very few of them, however. How can sport be real without competition between all the strongest? In fact, the only one that gathered the entire elite of world sport was the Olympic tennis tournament, where all the Russian masters who wanted to do it performed. In other sports, our people were either not allowed or were not allowed to go through full qualification. Why did the IOC do this? The answer is obvious: the organization assessed the threat of a boycott of the Olympics by 40 countries most radically inclined towards Russia, which was actually discussed at one time, and decided that it was easier to boycott Russia itself. Bach can repeat the phrase «we united representatives of 206 countries under one roof» as much as he wants. He knows that this is not so, and judging by his words on the last day of the IOC session, he understands that he bears responsibility for this.
What's next?
However, the main question now is not the reasons why Bach decided to leave the post of the head of the Olympic movement, but who will become its new leader. And, unfortunately, a situation is possible here in which Bach will still have to be remembered with a kind word, because one of the main candidates for replacement is the current president of the World Athletics Sebastian Coe. What is curious is that he was once also very loyal to our country. In 1980, he won Olympic gold in Moscow, and came to us during the 2013 World Athletics Championships in the Russian capital.
But now he is one of the most ruthless anti-Russian «hawks». Russian track and field athletes have been suspended from international tournaments «for the foreseeable future». Coe rejects the IOC's recommendations to allow athletes in neutral status, refusing to even consider possible options. In response to the question of when the Russians can return to international competitions, the Briton makes political statements for which, if the matter is approached responsibly and in compliance with all the rules, the IOC should have revoked recognition from his organization long ago. You don't have to be a fortune teller to understand that if this person heads the Olympic movement, Russia will return to it almost never.
The second possible candidate for the post of IOC president is Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., the son of the former president of the organization, who left a generally positive mark on the Olympic movement. He put an end to the series of boycotts of the 1980s and launched a mechanism through which the IOC became a financially powerful organization. Samaranch always maintained positive relations with the Soviet Union and later with Russia, and it is no coincidence that the National Tennis Center in Moscow is named after him, and his bas-relief is installed in Luzhniki.
As for his son, he has not distinguished himself with any significant and noticeable actions in relation to Russia, but the principle of «better nothing than bad» is more important here. Moreover, there was some good. Samaranch Jr. headed the IOC commission for admitting Russian athletes to the 2016 Olympic Games, and our main leaders went to Rio then — if, of course, you do not count the track and field athletes, who were eliminated by the same Coe. Juanito's admission to the Olympics in Paris in a neutral status, as he was called several times by Vyacheslav Aminov, the president of the Russian Modern Pentathlon Federation, who is well acquainted with him, assessed as «a painful but fair balance.»
However, it is, of course, difficult to consider Samaranch Jr. a pro-Russian candidate. And the question of whether such a candidate can be found in the current IOC has a positive answer — it is the Serb Nenad Lalovic, who recently joined the organization's executive committee. The head of the United World Wrestling, who is always spoken of very warmly in Russia, was one of the first to return Russian athletes to international competitions after February 2022, and now openly regrets the absence of the strongest representatives of our country at the Olympic Games in Paris. There is little doubt that if Lalovic heads the IOC, Russia will return to the Olympic movement in a full-fledged format, and this will happen sooner rather than later.
But for the representatives of the Global North in the IOC, of course, this candidate will be extremely inconvenient. And the Serb has not yet made any public statements about his desire to lead the Olympic movement. However, there is still time before the elections of the new head of the IOC, which are scheduled for March 2025. Which will be enough for both the nomination of obvious candidates and for the emergence of some new figure, not yet noticeable in the media space.
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