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Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
LAUSANNE – Thomas Bach will be re-elected unopposed for a second term as Olympic chief this week, just five months before the opening ceremony of the coronavirus-delayed Tokyo Games and less than a year before the increasingly controlled Games 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
The 67-year-old German’s second term as president of the International Olympic Committee promises to be as bumpy or turbulent as the first.
The most pressing item on the agenda at the start of his new four-year term, after an initial eight years that saw him grapple with, among other things, the trouble-laden Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016 Games, Russian sponsored doping. for the state and the deadly wave of coronavirus, it’s the Tokyo Olympics.
The IOC made the decision to postpone the 2020 Games for one year from July 23 to August 8 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The question now is how they will move forward.
Bach, who won Olympic fencing gold for West Germany in the team foil in 1976 and has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1991, should have been reinstated as IOC president in the Greek capital Athens, which was the site of the first Modern Olympic Games in 1896..
But the Covid-19 pandemic quickly put an end to that.
Instead, the 137th session of the IOC will take place with Bach at the Lausanne headquarters and members will connect via video conferencing from Wednesday to Friday, and the executive board meeting on Monday will be seen as preparation for the main event.
Before reinstalling Bach, the executive board is scheduled to receive updates on the activities of the IOC administration and reports from the organizing committees of the upcoming Olympic Games.
Among them will be the “Agenda 2020”, which has sought to streamline the bidding process for Olympic cities in an attempt to cut costs.
Paris awarded the 2024 Olympics and Los Angeles the 2028 Games in 2017, and last month the IOC awarded Brisbane preferred candidate status for 2032.
However, most eyes will be on Tokyo. There is still a certain degree of unpredictability.
The cancellation of the Tokyo Games is not beyond the realm of imagination despite the race to contain the coronavirus and go ahead with a Games contained in a biosecurity bubble.
Bach has gone out of his way to reiterate that the IOC remains committed to holding a “successful and safe” Tokyo Games this year, dismissing the cancellation talks as “speculation.”
However, overseas spectators are likely to be excluded, Japanese media reported last week after organizers said public safety would be the “top priority” at the Games.
The Japanese government, the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee are leaning towards holding the massive event only in front of a national audience, Yomiuri Shimbun and other outlets said.
Officials fear an influx of visitors from overseas will endanger the Japanese public, with Tokyo currently under a Covid-19 state of emergency limiting capacity at sporting events to 5,000.
Columnist David Owen of the respected website insidethegames.biz called Bach “an unfortunate president” of the IOC.
“It is sobering to think that, having completed a full term, he has yet to preside over a truly immaculate Games, and given the increasingly dark political shadows looming over Beijing, Paris 2024 could represent his last chance to do so,” Owen said in reference to threats to boycott the 2022 Winter Games over alleged human rights abuses by the Chinese government.
