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Bach elected new IOC president
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Thomas Bach was elected president of the International Olympic Committee yesterday in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The 59-year-old German needed only two rounds of voting by his fellow IOC members to inherit the mantle of the most powerful person in international sport from Jacques Rogge, who is stepping down after 12 years in charge.
Bach, who was one of six men vying for the job, will have an initial eight year term, with the possibility of another four years after that.
His election means there has only ever been one non-European as IOC president, the controversial American Avery Brundage, who ran the organisation from 1952-72.
The vote was by secret ballot.
C.K. Wu of Chinese Taipei was eliminated in the first round, leaving five contenders in the race.
After awarding the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo and bringing wrestling back into the games, the IOC completed the last of its three critical votes.
Bach, a 59-year-old German lawyer and IOC vice president, also heads Germany’s national Olympic committee. Richard Carrion, a Puerto Rican banking executive who heads the IOC’s finance commission, and vice president Ng Ser Miang of Singapore were his top challengers.
Also on the ballot were executive board members Sergei Bubka of Ukraine and former board member Denis Oswald of Switzerland.
Going into the final hours of the campaign, all signs pointed to a large bloc of support lined up behind Bach.
Bach is also be the first Olympic gold medalist to become IOC president. He won gold in team fencing for West Germany in 1976.
“This is like I’m an athlete and I’m just in front of a great final,” Bach said on Monday. “You feel you have done all your training, the test events have been going pretty well, so you can go with confidence in the competition. But you have to know that, at the grand final, everybody is on the same starting line.”
Bach had long been viewed as the favorite because of his resume: former Olympic athlete, long-serving member on the policy-making IOC executive board, chairman of the legal commission, head of anti-doping investigations and negotiator of European TV rights.
None of the six candidates had made any dramatic proposals for change, promising to continue the line pursued by Rogge, particularly in the fight against doping.
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