After a lot of speculation and also conversations between senior leaders and, in turn, IOC Members, a consensus was reached that it was not good to introduce a modification of this magnitude to pave the way for a re-election for the distinguished international leader Thomas Bach. The decision was not easy. While very strong voices and positions were raised in support of the German, who were certain that he could be re-elected practically without opposition, there was a sector that asked to respect the Olympic Charter and give other leaders the opportunity to run for the presidency starting in 2025. .
The transformative management that he has successfully carried out in these almost 11 years at the head of the IOC is public knowledge, being a pioneer in an open, transparent and sustainable administration over time, even more so, assuming that the IOC is a transatlantic in itself. For this reason, it came with the mission of unifying all sports actors for a common good: strengthening and protecting the world’s athletes. The task began with Agenda 2020, when he just assumed the presidency of the five-ring institution. Bach understood that the power of the IOC and what it is capable of generating required clear and unambiguous guidelines, therefore, he expanded their relationship beyond the traditional and conventional.
The IOC that Thomas Bach had in his head when he made the decision to run as a candidate in 2013, has not changed one bit from its avant-garde and innovative stance, moreover, always with the specter of some scandal that could shake the heart of the IOC from time to time. International Olympic Committee. Upon assuming him first term, he committed to an IOC of inclusion and gender parity, at a time when it was unthinkable to imagine that this vision of gender equality would be conscious within the IOC Members themselves. Because, let’s recognize, the IOC of its predecessors was an institution very closed to these changes of incorporating women into the Olympic arena. In fact, the IOC of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, was quite stubborn towards women. I felt like they didn’t fit. Only years later did he open up to integrating them almost out of obligation, but not out of conviction. For this reason, Bach is recognized worldwide for his work of integration, where there is no room for discrimination of any kind.
Thomas Bach has sport in his DNA. He knows what it means to prepare to achieve high performance, he knows and recognizes the efforts of the anonymous athlete, that young man who is excited to compete at school and then without realizing it is immersed in competitive sports. Each stage, each step he took to become an Olympic team champion in fencing, was sculpted with the temperance of the “chosen ones”, of those few who reach a place of privilege, because everything is linked, nothing is separated, it is a everything, but you also have to be able to quickly decipher and read where the error is, where you failed to improve it and be more efficient.
Thomas Bach dared. He has been a leader who is not afraid of changes in the pace of life, he treasures the good moments, but he feeds even more on the falls so that, in the future, the IOC that he will hand over to the national Olympic committees will be an institution. solid, robust, capable of interpreting the new generations, seeking new sports, new markets, new alliances for them. Although the most traditional – like me – continue to think that sport has been moving away from its origins and its values, it is no less true that times have changed, industrial revolutions happen more frequently and not so distant in time.
Today’s world is innovative and changing, the emergence of the Internet broke all paradigms and literally put the world in our hands, with the risks that this entails. And Thomas Bach, being a leader who is around 70 years old, read perfectly what was coming and dared to put the IOC on that timeline. Furthermore, in March of this year it incorporated Artificial Intelligence as a great tool to advance the development and improvements of some specific aspects of the sport. He did not question the ethics or morality of AI, he assumed that the limits are set by us as a whole, unless over time Artificial Intelligence sets the limits for us.
Paris will be Thomas Bach’s last Olympic station as head of the International Olympic Committee. When that moment arrives to address the Olympic world, indelible passages will resonate in your heart. In a matter of seconds he will go through his life together and for sport, his family, that attachment to the Olympic values, without staying in the past, but respecting that past that took him to where he is now, in the Olympus of the Great Leaders and, I dare say without fear of being wrong, he is on the PODIUM of the best leaders in the history of Olympism.
At the close of this Sportsin editorial on Parisian soil, I always say that the decision not to modify the Olympic Charter is a sovereign act that corresponds to the IOC Members, who are the ones who vote to change, improve or modify the Olympic Charter, but neither It is surprising that tomorrow a new motion appears and we return to this debate if it is healthy for world Olympism to modify the Olympic Charter. I am only sure that what Thomas Bach did goes beyond a statutory change. He is a leader who through hard work earned the love and respect of the national Olympic committees and the IOC Members themselves. He fought to have a healthy institution, full of life and with a seal of generosity and humility in triumph, attributes that he inherited from sport, his true passion.
