During the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session on March 18-21 IOC will elect a new President. SGI Europe tells every candidate’s story.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is in session on March 18-21. Among other things, it will be holding an election to determine who will succeed Thomas Bach as President.
There are seven candidates. You will find them listed below, in reverse order of the draw (for the sake of variety). Their names are linked to our profiles of them. The parenthetical terms CD link to their respective IOC candidature documents, where they lay out their platforms.
- Morinari Watanabe (CD)
- Sebastian Newbold Coe (CD)
- Kirsty Coventry (CD)
- Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. (CD)
- Johan Eliasch (CD)
- David Lappartient (CD)
- Feisal Al Hussein (CD)
On Thomas Bach
Bach has served as IOC President for the past 12 years – and has now been named Honorary President for Life. He was himself an accomplished fencer, winning among several other prizes an Olympic gold medal in team foil at the Montreal Games (1976).
He steered the ship through some high seas, like the Russian doping scandal (Sochi, 2014), the war on Ukraine and the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee (2023) and, of course, the lockdowns and their aftermath (Tokyo, 2020; Beijing, 2022).
He sought both to raise revenues – building on Juan Antonio Samaranch Sr.’s work on broadcasting rights – and to cut expenses. He also implemented Olympic Agenda 2020, which in 2014 made recommendations for the modernization of the Games.
