IOC's eclectic electorate poised to vote for "the most powerful person in sport"

The International Olympic Committee has been mired in scandal for decades. Today in Greece its members will pick a new president from seven candidates promising reform

This afternoon at the Costa Navarino resort in Greece, in a process that will make a Papal conclave look like a beacon of transparency, members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will elect a new IOC president to succeed the current incumbent, Thomas Bach.

Whichever of the seven candidates prevails will become one of the most powerful people in global sport, heading the body responsible for the Olympic Games.

Arguably the most powerful person in global sport is the president of FIFA, currently Gianni Infantino, because of football’s primacy. But the IOC president comes close, in terms of responsibility for a budget of billions, and the ability to get the attention and co-operation of the world’s most powerful leaders.

I should say up front that I am not the IOC’s biggest fan, riddled as it has been by corruption over decades, and with a 110-person membership that is partly royalty, partly Olympic legends and partly dodgepots, with CVs chock full of controversy.

One of those 110 members is currently serving a 15-year IOC suspension and that is Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah of Kuwait, probably the most influential man in sport you’ve never heard of.

Massively corrupt, Sheikh Ahmad (pictured below, right, with his good mate Thomas Bach) has used his power base in sport, particularly across Asia, to fix sporting elections, grease the paths of his allies into power - he effectively engineered Bach to the IOC presidency in 2013 - and enrich himself and his friends.

I don’t want to waste space on detailing all his crimes - metaphorical or actual - when you can read them in detail elsewhere - but he has convictions for fraud and forgery. A former FIFA council member, he has also been implicated in football bribery scandals and was targeted by the US Department of Justice for suspected racketeering and bribery.

He’s got the full package of badness, and remains supremely well connected.

I have multiple problems with the idea that the IOC is somehow the guardian of Olympic ideals.

The IOC have been woeful on protecting clean sport for decades, for example. The prime example of this happened in 2013 when I discovered that a corrupt lab boss in Moscow was at the centre of a state-sponsored Russian doping scheme.

Russia were planning to cheat their way to glory in the upcoming athletics world championships in Moscow that summer, and then, for their pièce de résistance, they were going to cheat their way to the top of the medals table at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

A senior Russian winter sport official told me: “Believe me, you won’t hear about a single doping scandal involving Russians during the [Sochi] Olympics. Everything will be done so that Russia will definitely get the most medals.” That was included in an article we published.

I told the IOC all about this in early July 2013, and offered them evidence. The IOC then said they had “passed it on internally to the relevant people and we will get back to you as soon as we get a response.” They never did get back to me.

Having been told that the forthcoming Olympics would be corrupted, and provided with evidence of a doping plot, they did absolutely nothing at all.

You can read much more about this, in depth, here.

Ignoring doping wasn’t new to the IOC in 2013. It has been alleged by several senior sports figures that the number of positive drugs tests at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was “capped” at 12 - so that top-class sport and America would not be embarrassed by too many failed tests.

As recently as 2016, a former long-standing official at the athletics global governing body (then the IAAF, now World Athletics), a man called Ollan Cassell, said the “capping” was part of a plan cooked up by the IAAF president of that period, Primo Nebiolo, and the IOC president in 1984, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

It has been alleged by multiple people that nine athletes failed drugs tests that were covered up during the final weekend of the LA Games alone, with paperwork detailing their cheating destroyed.

Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe was among those who won gold, in his case in the 1,500m, during that final weekend of action in 1984. To be absolutely clear, I’m not saying he failed a drugs test that was covered up, rather using him as an example of a big name who won a medal that weekend.

I have tried on a number of occasions to get access to back-up samples from 1984 that, for many years, were still kept in freezers at the UCLA lab in California. Nobody will confirm it for sure but it seems they were only destroyed in recent years. Imagine what a story that would have been: unmasking dopers with retests done 41 years after the LA Games. But I digress.

Coe is one of the seven candidates to become the IOC president today and is considered among the front-runners, along with Juan Antonio Samaranch Jar, son of the former IOC president who plotted to cover up doping in 1984. We’ll get to the full list of candidates in a moment.

The IOC under Bach has been perceived by, erm, the IOC, to have been successful because it rakes in money, largely from American TV. But he’s had his own share of controversies, and personally I was most disgusted by his role in effectively appeasing China after tennis player Peng Shuai was “forcibly disappeared” after making sexual assault allegations against a senior Communist Party official.

Bach was involved in making a “proof of life” video featuring him and Peng, but was accused by human rights lawyer and former Canadian Olympic swimmer, Nikki Dryden, of executing an IOC “media exercise” to help China. "I'm so relieved she's alive, but the execution of this proof-of-life video is really troubling from a safeguarding perspective,” Dryden said.

Global Athlete, an advocacy organisation with the slogan “Athletes’ voices, athletes’ rights" said the IOC had shown “an abhorrent indifference to sexual violence and the well-being of female athletes.”

Anyway, that’s ancient history now; it happened in late 2021, and I’m sure Bach is an improved man and better leader these days as he comes to the end of his 12-year-tenure as IOC president.

The candidates to replace Bach

(Alphabetical order by surname)

Montage courtesy of the Japan Times

Kirsty Coventry, 41, from Zimbabwe, top row above, second from the left, now Zimbabwe’s minister for sport. Former Olympic swimmer with seven Games medals, two gold. Among her goals, if successful, is to prioritise athletes’ mental health, and have a “zero tolerance” stance on corruption, doping and unethical behaviour.

Seb Coe, 68, British, top row, far left, currently president of World Athletics. Former MP. Delivered the 2012 London Olympics. Won four Olympic medals, including two 1,500m golds. Wants to decentralise power within global sport, and run a more transparent organisation.

Prince Feisal Al Hussein, 61, from Jordan, top row, far right, president of the Jordan Olympic Committee and chair of Jordan motorsport. A former wrestler and rally driver. Wants to review the timing of the Summer Olympics so more nations can bid, and believes Esports should be in the Olympics.

David Lappartient, 51, French, bottom row, far left, and currently president of cycling’s world governing body, the UCI. A former non-elite cyclist, he wants the Olympics to be hosted in Africa for the first time, have gender party among IOC members and cut IOC spending.

Johan Eliasch, 63, top row, third from the left, a Swedish-British businessman who is president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. A former CEO of sports goods company, Head, he says the IOC needs a better approach to commercialising their product, and is opposed to prize money for Olympians.

Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, age 65, Spanish, bottom row, middle. An IOC vice-president from 2016-2020 and since 2022. His manifesto includes protecting women in sport via “unambiguous distinctions between men's and women's categories”.

Morinari Watanabe, 66, Japanese, bottom row, right, president of the International Gymnastics Federation. The most eye-catching idea in his manifesto is the Olympics should be staged in five cities from five continents (10 sports per host city) at the same time for a 24-hour a day Games.

You can access more detailed biographies and the candidates manifesto documents via this link.

The electorate

More than 100 IOC members are expected to be voting in Greece this afternoon. If we discount the suspended and corrupt Sheikh Ahmad, then a selection of the other 109 members include the following.

• Thomas Bach, plus the seven candidates to replace him, above, and perhaps we’ll delve into some of the controversies the new IOC president has been involved in after he or she has won today’s election. Voting will take place in rounds with the candidate with the least votes eliminated before the next round. Voting ends when one candidate has polled more than half the available votes.

• Our old friend Gianni Infantino, who, as we know is an ally and sucker-up-in-chief to warmongers, assassination commissioners, egomaniac sexual predator USA presidents and African despots.

• Multiple royals from across the globe, including Princess Nora of Liechtenstein; Albert II, Prince of Monaco; HRH Princess Anne; Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg; candidate Prince Faisal bin Hussein; HRH Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck of Bhutan; and HRH Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud of Saudi Arabia.

• Shamil Tarpishchev, a sexist and racist former tennis player turned coach from Russia.

• Guy Drut of France, who won the 110m hurdles at the 1976 Games, and was given a 15-month suspended prison sentence and fined $60,000 in 2005 in a corruption and party-financing trial. He was convicted of benefiting from a fictitious job at a construction company from June 1990 to February 1993.

• Ng Ser Miang of Singapore, an IOC vice-president when accused in 2023 of a lack of integrity after being found guilty of interfering in a World Sailing election.

• Qatar’s Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, anointed as “tyrant of the year” in 2022 by Index on Censorship, for “concealing thousands of workers' deaths due to poor working conditions to arresting both local and international journalists.”

• Belgium’s Ingmar De Vos, who last summer was among prominent IOC members who wanted to silence American disquiet about the Chinese swimmers’ doping scandal.

And these are just a selection. I think a good word to describe the electorate as a whole would be “eclectic”.

Some 39% of the members competed as Olympians and some of those have been connected to doping during their sporting careers, but that is a whole other story, maybe for another time.

The new president won’t officially take a salary but will take “a single annual fixed amount” to cover some of his / her expenses of upwards of €275,000. IOC members get to claim various per diem expenses for their work. More information about this can be found in the IOC annual reports.

Coe, Samaranch Jnr and Coventry are reportedly the three favourites to succeed Bach, and whoever wins can expect increased scrutiny of every aspect of their careers and lives.

They will then embark on a new job that involves listening to nations begging to be awarded future Olympics (India will be wanting 2036 most of all, and perhaps Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and attending an Olympic Games every two years - alternating between summer and winter - to proclaim that these Games will be / have been the greatest Olympics ever.

It’s a tough gig, but somebody has to do it.

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