Olympic contest to pick IOC president is quirky and controlled by tight campaign and voting rules

By Canadian Press on March 17, 2025.

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece (AP) — The IOC is the undisputed champion of running the most tightly managed sports election, one compared by veteran Olympic watchers to a conclave to pick a pope.

Some of the seven presidential candidates in the contest on Thursday have aired frustrations with getting limited access to their fellow International Olympic Committee members during a five-month campaign. The voters themselves will get minimal updates between rounds of casting secret ballots on election day.

“It has been difficult to engage,” one leading contender, Sebastian Coe, told reporters last week before heading to Greece. “In future, this just needs to be a more open and expansive process. I think the membership deserves that.”

Those members are as quirky and curious a collective as the sets of IOC election rules that bind them.

Among the 109 eligible voters in the IOC’s invited and exclusive club are royal family members, including the Emir of Qatar, former lawmakers and diplomats, business leaders including billionaires, present and past Olympic athletes plus Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh.

Only IOC members can stand as candidates and a long-time perception has been that outgoing president Thomas Bach has promoted a protégé he hopes will win — even if playing a favorite would seem to breach political neutrality the Olympic movement holds dear.

Bach declined to be drawn in detail on Monday when asked if he intervened with voters on behalf of Kirsty Coventry, the two-time swimming gold medalist from Zimbabwe. She would be the first woman and first African president in the IOC’s 131-year history.

“What I felt obliged to say about the profile of my successor I have said in Paris,” said Bach, whose hands-on executive presidency ends formally in June after the term-limited 12 years.

Seven months ago at the Paris Olympics, Bach said “new times are calling for new leaders,” citing the need for a successor immersed in a “technological tsunami” of the digital world.

“I have nothing to add to this,” he said on Monday. He spoke at a news conference after chairing a meeting of his executive board that includes three of the seven candidates, including Coventry.

Olympic history

Coventry is the only woman in the race and just the second-ever female candidate to lead the IOC. A win on Thursday for the sports minister of Zimbabwe would add to Bach’s legacy of gender equality policies.

“I don’t feel that he is out campaigning for me,” she told reporters in an online call in January, adding she “had a good relationship with President Bach since 2013.”

Low-key campaign

IOC election rules barred candidates from publishing campaign videos, organizing public meetings or taking part in public debates. Voters could not publicly endorse their pick.

Candidates were allowed to write a manifesto the IOC published on the same day in December, then make just one official presentation to their voters at Olympic headquarters in January. Voters could not ask any questions after each 15-minute presentation that was not broadcast.

“If I was the president I think I’d be a little more flexible,” Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan said that day in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The seven candidates have no official media event before Thursday’s vote, though all will go on Tuesday to nearby Ancient Olympia. A formal ceremony there with a Bach speech opens an election gathering that runs through Friday.

Closed-doors election

The IOC will cut the online stream of its meeting at a resort hotel when the election process starts on Thursday at about 4 p.m. in Greece (1400 GMT). Members will have their phones and tablets collected and stored.

Most IOC staff must leave the room so only voters and essential election monitors stay. When a winner emerges the doors will open, the streamed broadcast turned back on and the announcement made.

Voting rules

About 100 members should be present and eligible in the first round to cast electronic votes. Candidates can vote but any compatriot cannot for as long as they stay in the contest.

The winner must get an absolute majority that likely will not happen in the first round. Several rounds could be needed. Until there is a winner, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. If there is a tie for the lowest total, a runoff vote between them will decide who is eliminated.

However, voters will not be told the totals for each candidate after each round. Instead, Bach “will announce only the name of the candidate who will not participate in the following round of voting,” the IOC rules state.

Bach “will not exercise his right to vote but he reserves his right to exercise a casting vote.”

The next IOC president — just the 10th ever — will take office on Olympic Day, June 23, at a ceremony in Lausanne.

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AP Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press

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