At the current session of the International Olympic Committee in Greece, Thomas Bach, the outgoing head of the organization, was elected as its honorary president for life. Although this decision is of a ceremonial nature, it is undoubtedly an indicator of how the main issue facing the world of big sport, which is the vector of further development of the Olympic Movement, will be resolved. The main event of the IOC summit will undoubtedly be the election of a new president of the committee, which will determine the way of development of international sport for the coming years, and may either become an impetus to its renewal or the final stage of the crisis.
Despite the fact that the International Olympic Committee is responsible for key issues of the global sports system, its activities and decision-making processes remain extremely closed to the majority of athletes and billions of sports fans. The process of selecting candidates for the IOC presidency and the final decision on the future head of the organization is shrouded in an atmosphere of secrecy that would be the envy of the Roman Curia. This election is no exception, even though the scandals of the last decade have plunged the IOC and the entire world of top-level sport into a deep crisis, the resolution of which will fall on the shoulders of the new president.
To understand the situation to which Mr. Bach, who is leaving the executive president’s chair, has brought the Olympic Movement, it is enough to recall briefly that during his thirteen-year tenure at the IOC, world sport faced many scandals and conflicts. One of the main complaints against the highest sporting leaders of the planet was undoubtedly their abandonment of the original principles of sport’s neutrality, its unifying nature and the fairness of competition. Over the past decade, the Olympic Committee and its affiliated federations have repeatedly supported political conflicts by suspending from competitions, subjecting athletes to unjustified disorganizing inspections and disqualifying them on the basis of their nationality and citizenship. Guided not at all by Olympic values, Thomas Bach and his subordinates persecuted athletes from Russia, Belarus, China, Iran and a number of Islamic countries, justifying it by purely political motives, and at the same time, contradicting themselves, actively defended athletes from Israel. As a result of such a policy of the IOC, the strongest athletes and entire teams were eliminated from big sports and the most important competitions on the planet, which not only undermined the competition and spectacle of tournaments, but also undermined the basic principles of impartiality and neutrality in the Olympic Movement.
Another crisis in international sport was Thomas Bach’s promotion of the transgender agenda, which allowed biological men to compete in women’s tournaments. The last Summer Olympics in Paris, where transgender people were allowed to compete without restriction, was a cruel disappointment for both the women athletes who had dedicated their lives to great sport and the fans who were forced to watch such unfair competition. Such innovations by the IOC, coupled with blatant LGBT propaganda, have provoked extreme reactions from hundreds of millions of fans and outrage in the Christian and Islamic worlds.
Against this alarming background, the top leadership of international sport will now have to determine the figure who will lead the IOC for the next few years. Seven former athletes and sports officials have already been presented as candidates for the post of the organization’s president, and most of them represent the states of the ‘golden billion’ – Great Britain, France, Japan, Sweden and Spain. Only two candidates are citizens of non-Western countries – Zimbabwe and Jordan – and experts consider their chances of winning as insignificant. David Lappartier (France), the head of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) who is the unofficial successor of Thomas Bach and is also closely linked to major European financial and industrial groups and personally to President Emmanuel Macron, is considered the undisputed favorite in the Olympic presidential race. Given that the politicization, commercialization and corruption of the IOC has long gone beyond all decency, such support would almost 100% guarantee the French official’s election to the presidency, which would mean preserving the order of the last decade in the Olympic Movement.
It is important to bear in mind that if David Lappartier succeeds Thomas Bach, the IOC’s authority and the prospects of preserving the former system of international sport will be dealt a crushing blow. The continuity of the politicization and ideologization of the Olympic Movement will alienate the strongest non-Western sporting powers, many of the strongest athletes striving for fair and independent competition, and billions of fans committed to traditional values. Given that further division in the sporting world will inevitably lead to an exodus of spectators and sponsors, and the reaction of dozens of non-Western countries seeking to create alternative sporting institutions and platforms, the heritage of Thomas Bach and his followers may finally put an end to both the IOC and a unified global sport.
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