He looked good, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Surprisingly vital after three weeks in the Beijing Olympic bubble. The complexion was brown, the gray-white hair flowed to the side like a North Sea wave. He dabbed the words a little more springily than usual, without the usual “Uhs” and “Ohs” – before you noticed that it wasn’t Thomas Bach who addressed the plenary session of the IOC members on Saturday, but Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. In terms of content, the Spaniard, who headed the IOC Coordination Committee for these games, already laid a very presidential carpet of self-praise, platitudes and tried-and-true jokes. Bach, the real IOC President, followed the spectacle with noticeably tired eyes.
Just so that there are no doubts: These 24th Olympic Winter Games were “great fun”, a “wonderful journey”, which the young Samaranch painted in the most beautiful colors over the weekend, on the second day of the 139th IOC session. He first emphasized that the commission he heads – the body that essentially ensures that the games run smoothly – has hardly had to meet in recent weeks. Not a very stupid move to stick the praise on your lapel.
The games were otherwise “flawless”, Samaranch found; from the food to the great staff to the crowd. An estimated three billion people have been connected to the games, Samaranch claimed. This realization apparently led him to the conclusion that “the Olympian spirit shines far and brightly”. Does this cone of light also extend to the Uyghurs in north-west China, hundreds of thousands of whom are apparently interned in camps, or to Tibet and Hong Kong? Unfortunately, the 62-year-old had somehow forgotten this aspect.
Samaranch is now formally back on the Executive Branch for the next four years
In any case, Samaranch later had an extra treat on top. He resumed the post of IOC Vice-President, which he had given up on rotation two years ago. “You can’t believe how happy I am to continue working with you,” he called out to the plenum after he had received 72 yes votes and four votes against. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” added Samaranch. Everything is really fine for Juanito, the son of former affair-hardened IOC patron Juan Antonio Samaranch. For the next four years, he is now formally back in the executive, the powerhouse of the Rings movement. IOC President Bach’s term of office ends in 2025. He has never denied that Juanito is aiming to succeed him.
Head of the IOC from 2025? Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr.
(Photo: Christian Ort/Gepa/Imago)
Samaranch also casually ironed out the other potholes of these games. He listed 264 positive corona cases in almost 14,000 tests at the airport, and only 0.01 percent were positive in the strictly shielded bubble. So the bubble hadn’t really burst, Samaranch was allowed to proclaim – the only question was at what price. Those athletes who almost or completely missed their competitions before and during the games had over enormous mental burden and unacceptable conditions in some quarantine shelters.
The corona positive tests of athletes? The IOC finds regrettable individual cases
Kit McConnell, the sports director of the IOC, had already spoken of “individual challenges” during the games – a nice twist. The individual fates were based on a strict system: daily, highly sensitive PCR tests that were still effective long after the athletes had recovered. The price that a select few paid was high, as Samaranch himself acknowledged: “When you’re one of the 0.01 percent positives, it feels like 100 percent.” How high would the price have been if officials like the German alpine director Wolfgang Maier hadn’t criticized the tests, which were initially even more sensitive, before the games?
In any case, the IOC members obediently followed the gospel according to Thomas on the final weekend, promising to build a “better world through sport” (Danka Bartekova) and to put their qualities as former Olympic champions at the service of the Olympic movement in the future (new members Martin Fourcade and Frida Hansdotter). No one made requests to speak, let alone critical contributions, with the exception of Yasuhiro Yamashita from Japan. He praised the social change that the Olympic Asia tour had driven in recent years in the host countries South Korea (2018), Japan (2021) and now China.
One had to be grateful to Yamashita for his contribution – after all, he reminded us that two million US dollars had once flowed from Tokyo to those close to former IOC member Lamine Diack – allegedly as consultant fees. The Paris special public prosecutor’s office PNF suspects vote buying, and has been investigating the suspects for years, including the Japanese Tsunekazu Takeda. He was the head of organization for the application for years and, as head of the IOC Marketing Commission, was at important sources of money. That these investigations remain in focus should be guaranteed by the fact that the Japanese have long been campaigning for the Olympics again: this time with Sapporo for the 2030 winter break.
An application from Barcelona and the Pyrenees has also been submitted for 2030. Perhaps their most important election campaigner has been back on the IOC executive since Saturday.