LAUSANNE, March 8, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – 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
from the increasingly scrutinised 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
The 67-year-old German’s second mandate as president of the International
Olympic Committee promises to be as eventful, or turbulent, as his first.
The most pressing agenda item at the start of his new four-year term, after
an opening eight years that saw him deal with, among other things, the
problem-laden 2014 Sochi and 2016 Rio Games, state-sponsored Russian doping
and the deadly wave of coronavirus, is the Tokyo Olympics.
The IOC took the decision to postpone the 2020 Games for a year to July 23-
August 8 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The question is now how they will go ahead.
Bach, who won Olympic fencing gold for West Germany in the team foil in
1976 and has been an International Olympic Committee member since 1991,
should have been reinstalled as IOC president in the Greek capital Athens
which was the site of the first Modern Olympics in 1896.
But the Covid-19 pandemic quickly put paid to that.
The 137th IOC Session will instead take place with Bach at Lausanne
headquarters and members connecting through video-conferencing from Wednesday
to Friday, with the executive board meeting Monday 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
Organising Committees for the upcoming Olympic Games.
Among them will be the “Agenda 2020”, which has sought to streamline the
candidacy process for bidding Olympic cities in a bid to cut costs.
It saw Paris granted the 2024 Olympics and Los Angeles the 2028 Games back
in 2017, and the IOC last month accorded preferred candidate status accorded
to Brisbane for 2032.
What most eyes will be on, however, is Tokyo. There still lies a degree of
unpredictability.
A cancellation of the Tokyo Games is not out of the realms of imagination
despite the race to contain the coronavirus and press ahead with a Games
contained in a bio-secure bubble.
Bach has been at pains to reiterate that the IOC remains committed to
holding a “successful and safe” Tokyo Games this year, dismissing
cancellation talk as “speculation”.
Overseas spectators, however, are likely to be shut out, Japanese media
reported last week after organisers said that public safety would be the “top
priority” at the Games.
The Japanese government, Tokyo metropolitan government and Tokyo 2020
organising committee are leaning towards holding the massive event in front
of a domestic audience only, the Yomiuri Shimbun and other outlets said.
Officials fear that an influx of visitors from abroad will endanger the
Japanese public, with Tokyo currently under a Covid-19 state of emergency
that limits capacity at sporting events to 5,000.
Columnist David Owen of the respected insidethegames.biz website called
Bach “an unlucky president” of the IOC.
“It is sobering to reflect that, having completed a full term, he has still
to preside over a truly unblemished Games – and given the darkening political
shadows hanging over Beijing, Paris 2024 might represent his final 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.