For the seven who want to occupy sports’ most powerful position – President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – they will get their 15 minutes of fame on Thursday.
One woman and six men get a chance to present their manifesto, their vision for the Olympic movement in front of the entire Olympic family in the Swiss city of Lausanne.
It’s the only time the candidates to succeed current IOC President Thomas Bach have “official” time to convince the IOC membership which is in excess of 200 nations that they should vote for them.
After the presentations by “the 7”, the IOC family has to wait until March when they all meet in Athens, Greece to vote.
Then we will know who will be the new IOC President, the man or woman who will oversee the Milan Winter Olympics in just over a year and then deal with US President Donald Trump as well as the devastation caused by the fires around Los Angeles ahead of the LA 2028 summer games.
The IOC also has many other challenges to address and while there is crossover of ideas among the seven candidates, some have stronger more audible ideas while others less so.
Sporting legend Coe needs little introduction
Of the seven candidates, two are British. Sebastian Coe needs little introduction. A sporting legend on the track, Olympic Golds and World Records to boot coupled with the tag of the person who delivered the successful London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.
He’s revolutionised athletics world governing body from the tired IAAF to a vibrant World Athletics since he became President in 2015. He’s one of life’s able communicators and an astute politician, a very handy trait in the harsh world of elite sports administration.
The other British candidate is much less publicly known, but Johan Eliasch packs a punch with his CV.
A billionaire businessman who specialises in turning company fortunes around, the most well known the sports manufacturer ‘HEAD’.
In recent decades he’s turned his attention to climate and environmental issues. Quiet and softly spoken with a Swedish accent lilt, he was born and grew up there, Eliasch is also President of a global sport. His governing body is the FIS for skiing and snowboarding. He’s also worked for Prime Ministers, advised both Labour and Conservatives and counts royalty as friends.
Eliasch’s USP is his climate credentials. A billionaire yes, so some would say he can afford to have a conscious, but he’s been talking about it for a while.
In 2005, he founded The Rainforest Trust and a year later he co-founded Cool Earth, both entities exist to protect and preserve endangered rainforest.
As President of a winter sport, the very future of the Winter Olympics needs addressing and who may even been able to host it, while the countdown to the 2028 Los Angeles Games ticks down as vast areas around LA have been burned to the ground during recent wildfires.
Eliasch an outsider
Johan Eliasch is an outsider for the post
Eliasch told Sky Sports News: “Governments have not been very effective when it comes to climate change. And this is an existential threat to mankind. The planet wasn’t designed for eight billion people living the way we do. And there is only one planet. And we don’t have the technology to go somewhere else in the galaxy or in the universe. Let’s face it.
“We need to find solutions, now if we translate that into initiatives… For the Winter Games, there are many locations, many venues that are going to be very challenging.
“I’m not entirely negative about the future of the Winter Games. But here we have a duty also to act sustainably. We don’t want to create infrastructure that can’t be used in the future and it’s much better, as has already been proposed by the IOC, to have a rotation scheme.
“We focus on certain regions, venues, where the federations concerned may bring events, support these regions. So for the Winter Games smaller regions that are used every two or three editions of the Winter Games. So imagine this, we have let’s say 10 places and we rotate the games between these 10 places.”
An impressive figure with an impressive CV, but Eliasch does carry issues that some IOC members may query.
When becoming President of FIS, four of the larger snow sport countries initially refused to vote as Eliasch was the only name on the ballot paper, not even the option of “yes/no” had angered them while Eliasch refutes any link to business dealings with The Duke of York, Prince Andrew.
Eliasch acknowledges a business was set up in 2002 where the Duke of York used one of his titles, Earl of or Andrew Inverness, but says he knows and had a friendship with the Prince through a wider friendship with members of the Royal Family.
While Eliasch presses his environmental credentials, he for now is viewed as an outsider albeit one with a powerhouse CV.
Coe is a frontrunner
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Lord Coe tells Sky Sports senior reporter Geraint Hughes that he has “never been better prepared for a race” than he is for his campaign to become the new president of the International Olympic Committee
Coe on the other hand is one of the frontrunners to succeed Thomas Bach with an energy for the top job he told Sky Sports was a “dance he could not sit out”.
While Coe, like all candidates, reins back publicly from endorsing revolution at the IOC, Coe’s “evolution” comes from the belief that “too much power lies in the hands of too few people” within the IOC.
Coe’s IOC would see sport and the athletes at the heart and centre of all the decision making along with the entire membership of the IOC. He wants a collaborative Presidency.
Coe has been the most vocal of all candidates around the debate of determining what is the “female category”. As President of World Athletics, he has overseen a policy determining that and has banned transgender women from competing in that category.
The rule states that “no transgender athlete who had gone through male puberty would be permitted to compete in female world ranking competitions.”
If Coe becomes the new IOC President, issues around the protection of the “female category” and prize money, another hotly-debated topic, will be addressed. His belief was and is, had the IOC had a clear policy around transgender athletes and those with DSD (Differences in sexual development) at Paris 2024, the controversy and mis-reporting around two female boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting, would have been avoided.
Who are Cole and Eliasch up against?
Kirsty Coventry is the only female candidate
Five other candidates are vying to become the next President of the IOC.
The only female candidate is Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe.
Coventry was a decorated Olympic swimmer, winning Gold medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.
After retiring she has been heavily involved in sports administration, including being Zimbabwe’s Sports Minister, should she win the Presidency vote, Coventry would be become the first woman to hold the office of IOC President.
Another recognisable name is Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch. He is the son of the former IOC President who bore his name.
Samaranch Snr was IOC President for 21 years between 1980 and 2001 while his son has been an active member on the IOC for two decades.
He’s well-versed in IOC politics and well known among the electorate and very much viewed as a front runner with Coe.
The other candidates include HRH Prince Feisal Al Hussein from Jordan, David Lappartient of France who is the President of the UCI – Cycling’s global governing body and Morinari Watanabe from Japan.
