★ The Sports Examiner: Chronicling the key competitive, economic and political forces shaping elite sport and the Olympic Movement.★
★ To get the daily Sports Examiner Recap by e-mail: sign up here! ★
≡ END OF AN ERA ≡
“The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board (EB) today agreed to accept the resignation of IOC President Thomas Bach as an IOC Member, effective after 23 June 2025. This will be the day of the handover to the new IOC President, who will be elected on 20 March 2025 in Costa Navarino, Greece.”
The Executive Board met online Wednesday and Bach, now 71, has decided to retire rather than stay on as a member of the IOC until his term (as a member) would expire at age 80.
He will be remembered as a transformative leader of the Olympic Movement:
● He managed to get the Olympic Games past the Covid-19 pandemic and still hold the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021 and the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
● Bach will also be remembered for dealing with Russia and calamities including the revelations of its state-sponsored doping program from 2011-15 and then the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, just after the close of the Beijing Winter Games.
● He reformed the Olympic Movement through his Olympic Agenda 2020 and Olympic Agenda 2020+5, removing the requirements to build new facilities to host Olympic or Winter Games, allowing Games to be held in multiple cities and regions (even countries) and eliminating a host-city bid process which made humiliated losers out of cities and countries which had spent millions to compete.
These changes have now led to more than a dozen countries involved in discussions on how they might line up as potential Olympic hosts in 2036 or 2040.
Bach led – some will say imposed – a disciplined leadership process on the IOC, creating a capable but quite large staff team at the newly-built Olympic House in Lausanne. He expanded the IOC’s relationship with the United Nations, drawing criticism from some that IOC projects were sometimes not related to sport, but to diplomacy.
And the IOC did very well financially during his tenure, reaching $7.6 billion in revenues in the 2021-24 quadrennial.
¶
So what can be read into all this? Only Bach knows (and knowing Bach, has already planned):
● He could rest for a while before returning to the world scene, either in sports or possibly in an international role, especially with some arm of the United Nations, with which he cooperated so closely during his term.
● Bach will be made, possibly at the IOC Session in Greece, an Honorary Member of the IOC. There is no doubt of this and he deserves it.
● But there is another option, already suggested by one long-time observer, that Bach could be made Honorary President for Life and in that role, could serve as a confident and consultant to a less-experienced new IOC President, such as Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry, just 41.
No one knows but Bach and his closest confidants in the IOC. In any case, the next President – to be elected on 20 March – will get three months to work with Bach until he or she takes over on 24 June.
¶
★ Receive our exclusive, weekday TSX Recap by e-mail by clicking here.
★ Sign up a friend to receive the TSX Recap by clicking here.
★ Please consider a donation here to keep this site going.
For our updated, 895-event International Sports Calendar for 2025 and beyond, by date and by sport, click here!
