The 144th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) held near Ancient Olympia, Greece, is expected to elect a new President on Thursday to succeed Thomas Bach who steps down in June after 12 years in charge.
The opening ceremony of the IOC session took place at the International Olympic Academy, adjacent to the ancient ruins where the Games began nearly 3,000 years ago. Following the opening ceremony, the main proceedings take place at Costa Navarino, a coastal resort in southwestern Greece.
There are seven candidates to succeed Bach, with IOC vice-president Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, Zimbabwe’s sports minister Kirsty Coventry and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe of Britain seen as the frontrunners.
International cycling chief David Lappartient, International Gymnastics Federation head Morinari Watanabe, Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan and Olympic newcomer and multimillionaire Johan Eliasch, who heads the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, complete the lineup.
The election will be conducted in multiple rounds, with the candidate receiving the fewest votes eliminated in each round until one secures an absolute majority. The winner will serve an eight-year term, with the next IOC presidential election scheduled for 2033.
Outgoing President Bach was named honorary president for life on Wednesday issuing a call for global peace and for respect to the Olympic ideal.
“The Greeks and the Greek civilization have given humanity two things that we are grateful of: Democracy and the Olympic Games,” he said.
Bach, a German lawyer and former Olympic fencing champion, took over in 2013 and immediately introduced wide-ranging reforms both in relation to the Olympic Games and the IOC itself, including reducing the size and cost of the Games to make them more attractive to future host cities.
Reuters notes that his tenure as president was at times rocky, with the Olympics hit by the 2014 Sochi Games’ Russian state-backed doping scandal, which led to Russian athletes participating as neutrals in several editions of the Games.
He also had to deal with political tensions on the Korean Peninsula prior to the 2018 winter Games in South Korea’s Pyeongchang, and was also forced to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Olympics by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Greece proposed that the birthplace of the Ancient Olympics become the permanent venue for the election of all IOC presidents in the future.
Less than a week after his inauguration as the new president of the Hellenic Republic, Konstantinos Tasoulas formally opened the IOC session and proposed that the election of the new president of the IOC takes place in Ancient Olympia.
“Why not establish, in honor of the location that gave birth to the Olympic Games, that each time the election of the new president of the IOC take place here, in Ancient Olympia. Since the symbolism Ancient Olympia emits, as the sacred birthplace and eternal soul of the Olympic Movement, absolutely matches the multifaceted, cultural, social, sports and humanitarian work the head of the IOC undertakes each time, you would contribute this way in the perfect rekindling of the Olympic heritage,” President Tasoulas said.
Related: Is It Time to Make Greece the Permanent Home of the Olympic Games?
