Geneva – Thursday’s IOC presidential election will take place in a political situation that appears to be a world away from the final contested Olympic leadership vote in 2013.
“There’s a very different flavour between the two elections,” said Prince Faisal of Jordan, a member of the IOC and of three of the seven candidates for this vote who voted 11 and a half hours ago.
“It was more personality-driven,” Prince Faisal told The Associated Press in an online interview from Amman. We don’t want sports to be politicized, but the reality is that we are part of this global environment. ”
Real World Politics was in Buenos Aires last time. Current candidates Juan Antonio Samaranche and Kirsty Coventry (the new member of the time) were also voters. The same was true of Princess Haya, the sister of the Equestrian Prince.
IOC President Thomas Bach is famous for making a call that day within minutes of winning the six nominee contest after the phone held his hand to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Then, in September 2013, Russia was the host of the next Olympics, and within four months the Sochi Winter Games opened. Russia has since been a more trusted IOC partner, but polluted those games with state-backed doping schemes and defeated Sochi’s UN-assisted Olympic suspension in the conflict in Ukraine.
A major problem for Bach’s successors is protecting the next summer game, which opens in Los Angeles in July 2028. This forms the United States as an unpredictable partner of its long-term alliance in the multilateral world order in which the IOC belongs to itself.
In Jordan, diplomatic challenges are normal in Jordan, led by his brother King Abdullah II, who met President Donald Trump last month at the White House.
“In Jordan, this is what we lived in before I was born,” said the 61-year-old prince of a kingdom that shares the border with Syria, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territory and Saudi Arabia.
Palestinian Olympic Body, which sent eight athletes to last year’s Paris Summer Games, is one of 206 recognized national teams and an official refugee team.
When asked if the Palestinian team would compete in Los Angeles, Prince Feisal said: “I hope they are there as part of the long-term solution.”
“Can I guarantee that? No. Are you worried? Yes. We have to support peace. Sports can play that healing role and can bring people together. We’ve seen it at the Olympics.”
The final gathering of IOC candidates before the election meeting, near the location of the ancient Olympia in Greece, was a meeting of European officials in Frankfurt.
Prince Faisal, a member of the IOC’s executive committee since 2019, said of the impact he felt in Frankfurt, “There was a lot of debate about how it went and what it had impact.”
The prince gave Olympic leaders his belief that President Trump wants Rampic to succeed.
“He doesn’t want to miss that opportunity,” Prince Feisal said. “There will be issues. There are opinions that we must consider, but at the end of the day we have to do the right thing.
“The question of convincing him of the value we stand for should be the value he should support,” he said. “And I think that’s possible.”
Will Prince Feisal become the IOC leader navigate the three-year lead to Los Angeles in the Trump administration? He suggested that Thursday’s vote could go to at least the fourth round.
“If it’s not me, I’m fine with that,” he said. “At least I was part of this discussion.”
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
