It’s Time For That Rarest Of Olympic Events: Picking An IOC President

Thomas Bach’s tenure as International Olympic Committee President is at an end, and a new leader of the Olympic movement will be chosen by the IOC membership on March 20. Seven candidates have thrown their hats into the Olympic ring hoping to become president of what has been described as one of the world’s most exclusive clubs, but with three weeks to go before the vote, a true frontrunner has yet to emerge from the peloton.

Those vying for the post are Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan, Sebastian Coe of Great Britain, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe, Johan Eliasch of Great Britain, David Lappartient of France, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, and Morinari Watanabe of Japan. The winner will become the front person of the multibillion-dollar organization that controls one of the world’s most watched sporting events.

These seven contenders are a study of power and influence in the intersecting worlds of international sport and business, with a splash of royalty thrown in too. Al Hussein is the younger brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Samaranch is an IOC Vice President whose father guided the organization between 1980 and 2001. Coe, Eliasch, Lappartient, and Watanabe all currently head governing bodies of different Olympic sports, and all four have backgrounds in business, politics, or both.

Coe, a former middle distance runner, and Coventry, a retired elite swimmer, are both Olympic gold medallists in their own right. All have professed their heartfelt commitment to leading the IOC and the Olympic movement forward, though naturally they differ in how exactly to go about that.

The election will take place during the IOC session at Costa Navarino in Greece, a spectacular stretch of luxury resorts bordering the idyllic blue waters of the Mediterranean. Fittingly, the session will commence with an opening ceremony at Olympia, which hosted the ancient Olympics for nearly four centuries and remains the spiritual home of the Games. The IOC membership, which including several high-profile sports legends and one Academy Award-winning actress, will determine who succeeds Bach, likely over multiple rounds of voting.

IOC Presidential candidates are not allowed to campaign for office in the traditional sense. This election is not about lawn signs and campaign rallies; instead, each candidate prepared a manifesto setting out who they are and what they aspire to do, which was quietly published on the IOC website in December. All seven convened in Lausanne, Switzerland at the end of January to make a 15-minute pitch directly to the voting membership, then had 10 minutes to expand on their platforms and answer questions from reporters.

Since then, jockeying for votes has been a discreet behind-closed-doors affair, with candidates making the rounds at the Asian Winter Games in Harbin, China last month as well as at the European Olympic Committee’s general assembly in Frankfurt this week. Whoever emerges as the winner will have convinced voters that they are the best fit to deal with the issues currently on the IOC’s doorstep, and others looming on the horizon.

The next IOC President will oversee the delivery of the Olympic Summer and Winter Games between now and at least 2032, while also serving unofficially as sports’s main ambassador to an increasingly troubled world. Bach has had to walk an uncomfortable line at times, maintaining that the IOC is “strictly politically neutral” while recognizing that sport in general and the Olympics in particular have the power to soothe divisions and build solidarity in places of conflict.

The winning candidate will inherit a much changed landscape from what Bach stepped into when he took over from Jacques Rogge after an undramatic election 12 years ago. Bach has spent a good deal of his mandate modernizing the Olympic movement. His Olympic Agenda 2020 did away with some of the IOC’s stuffier traditions and paved the way for the inclusion of trendy urban sports like BMX and breaking at the Games. Another enduring legacy is The Olympic Channel, the digital platform and internet TV channel that makes Games content available 24/7, fanning the flames of interest around the Olympics even when the next one is years away.

Whoever wins the vote will also be responsible for assuring the organization’s success beyond 2032, the year when several of the IOC’s major broadcast deals are set to expire. Negotiating new deals that take into account increased demand for coverage and the plethora of digital and streaming options available will be a top priority. Potentially rethinking the tiered way Olympic sponsorships are structured — particularly in light of the departure of three major sponsors last year — and how AI is used may also be key items on the agenda.

Climate change, of particular concern to the Winter Olympics, and sustainability will remain large issues. And unlike during most of IOC history, the Summer and Winter Games are not the only events it has to manage: its expanding portfolio now includes the Youth Olympic Games and the recently announced Olympic Esports Games, whose inaugural edition will take place in Saudi Arabia in 2027.

One thing the new president won’t have to worry about in the near future? Finding hosts for the next several editions. The Olympics are booked out until 2036, with Milan and Dolomite resort Cortina D’Ampezzo jointly hosting next year’s Winter Games before the spotlight shifts to Los Angeles and the Summer Games in 2028. The French Alps will host in 2030, with Brisbane, Australia and Salt Lake City welcoming them in 2032 and 2034.

The new president will become only the tenth person to lead the IOC in its 131-year existence. So far all have been men, and eight of the nine — with the exception of American Avery Brundage — have hailed from Europe. Whether or not they vote for a candidate of their continent, Europeans will have a big say in the outcome. Of the 109 IOC members eligible to vote, more than a third are from European nations.

As their predecessors did, the seven hopefuls will strive to uphold the historic Olympic motto of faster, higher, stronger. But not together — like any other Olympic contest, only one can emerge as the victor.