The oldest will have to come to terms with it: the year 2020 will see the IOC carry out a serious upheaval in its workforce. At least eight new faces will slip into the family photo of members of the Olympic institution. Among them, three are already known. For the others, we will have to wait for the Tokyo 2020 Games.
The IOC made the announcement in two stages, Thursday December 5, on the last day of its Executive Board meeting. Three leaders will be proposed as new members during the next session, organized on January 9 and 10, 2020, on the sidelines of the Winter Youth Games in Lausanne. Seven months later, elections to the Athletes' Commission, scheduled for the Tokyo 2020 Games, will appoint five other entrants. Thirty candidates will be in the running.
Well-known names, first. The Italian-Swiss Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, the American David Haggerty, president of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), and the Japanese Yasuhiro Yamashita, president of the national Olympic committee, will be put to the vote on January 10 at Lausanne. They will be elected. The only uncertainty concerns the number of votes that each party will be able to collect.
With the entry of Gianni Infantino, FIFA finds a place at the IOC abandoned since the departure of Sepp Blatter in 2015. Yasuhiro Yamashita, Olympic judo champion in 1984, in all categories, will replace Tsunekazu Takeda within the Olympic institution, after succeeding him on the Japanese Olympic committee. David Haggerty, re-elected this year for a second term at the head of the ITF, strengthens an American contingent weakened by the departure of Larry Probst.
One name is missing: Sebastian Coe. The Briton, unanimously renewed last September for a new 4-year lease as president of World Athletics (formerly IAAF), will still have to wait. But his turn will come. Quickly.
Thomas Bach explained it on Thursday December 5 at a press conference: “ We wanted him to become a member of the IOC as president of one of our most important Olympic sports. » The IOC wanted it. But an obstacle prevented the ethics commission from proposing his name: Sebastian Coe chairs a consulting company, CSM, whose activities in the Olympic movement could create a serious conflict of interest.
« We are in close consultation with him, we have considered the risk of potential conflict of interest that he could have, specified Thomas Bach. CSM works as a consultant with various organizations and stakeholders, including through partnerships with the IOC itself. Sebastian Coe hopes to be able to resolve this issue in the coming months. The door remains open for the Tokyo Games. »
The message is clear. In the current state of his activities, the Briton cannot enter the IOC, where the IAAF is no longer represented by its president since the departure of Lamine Diack in 2015. But a seat will be reserved for him during the session organized on the sidelines of the Tokyo 2020 Games, on the condition that he cuts all ties with his consulting agency.
Athletes now. Five places on the IOC Athletes' Commission will be vacant on the last evening of the Tokyo Games, Sunday August 9, 2020. Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe), Danka Bartekova (Slovakia), Tony Estanguet (France), and James Tomkins (Australia), all elected by their peers at the Rio 2016 Games, will leave home. They will have reached the end of their 8-year mandate. Stefan Holm (Sweden), designated by the IOC to join the same commission, will also make way.
There is no shortage of candidates to replace them. The IOC communicated the official list. It has 30 names. Applicants come from 30 national Olympic committees. They represent 19 different summer sports. But, unpleasant surprise, the list includes only 10 women, for a contingent of 20 male candidates.
Among the best known to the public are athletes Mutaz Essa Barshim (high jump – Qatar), Ekaterini Stefanidi (pole vault – Greece), swimmers Federica Pellegrini (Italy), Cate Campbell (Australia) and Teresa Alshammar (Sweden ), basketball player Pau Gasol (Spain), triathlete Alistair Brownlee (Great Britain). Clarification: only one of the “leavers”, the Slovakian Danka Bartekova, chose to try her luck again.
