IOC President Thomas Bach with Olympic Silver medallist winner canoe slalom Jess Fox.

Gianni Merlo, AIPS President - It has been a hot summer for the IOC President Thomas Bach is travelling the world to be sure that the reforms he wants, through the Agenda 2020, can be accepted by all. He has a minor revolution in mind, but some of his colleagues are quite conservative, and it will not be an easy task to implement all of Bach’s new ideas.

The Olympic Programme - Bach would like to avoid the existing rule that promotes and relegates sports in and out of the programme every four years. In the past years, this system has compelled International federations to spend millions in the hope of promotion or avoiding relegation.

The Olympic Charter now states that the Olympic Programme may have a maximum of 28 sports accepted. To change this number, a 2/3  majority vote is necessary during the Session, along with the presence of 30 members representing international federations and athletes who have no interest in increasing the number of sports, because it will mean less money for everybody.

It will be difficult to change. So now we have heard that a new idea is rising - to fix the maximum number of the disciplines, which counted 302 in London, without increasing the number of the athletes: 10.500. In this case, more than 28 sports can be part of the Olympic Programme.

However, this solution is it difficult to digest for the International federations, because some will be compelled to remove some of their disciplines that are not as interesting for public viewing. But the real problem will again be about the money: how will the allotted half billion dollars be distributed if more sports are included?

The Age Limit - Bach has had the dream to change the age limit of IOC members, raising it to 75, so as not to lose important colleagues who can still give a lot to the movement. But the majority of the members look oriented to stay with the existing limit of 70 years. Maybe that in the end, a compromise will be found, allowing members on duty in special positions to continue until the end of their mandates. This is reasonable.

Crisis of Olympic candidatures - In mid-May the news that a people’s referendum had shattered the Olympic dream of the Polish city Krakow, which wanted to compete for the organisation of the Winter Games 2022, was difficult to digest. After this, Ukraine’s Lviv also decided to withdraw. Despite this, the IOC has reacted with elegance to this new slap in the face. Forced withdrawal is not something new, but it is a surprise that, of the eight cities which announced their plans of competing after the London Games, five have been met with unfavourable opinions.

The details - This was the grid of the 2022 Winter Olympic dreams: Almaty (Kazakhstan), Beijing (China), Krakow (Poland), Lviv (Ukraine), Munich (Germany), Oslo (Norway), St Moritz (Switzerland) and Stockholm (Sweden). The first to be discouraged were Munich and St Moritz, the last Krakow amd Lviv. At the beginning of this year, Stockholm raised the white flag, because it too didn’t know how to solve the knotty problem of having to hold the ski races at Are, 300 km from the capital.

The move - To avoid even more bad news, IOC president Thomas Bach visited Norway, where he talked about the next edition of the Winter Youth Olympics 2016, but he also tried to support the candidature of Oslo 2022, which has received many opposing opinions. They haven’t forgotten that, after the 1994 Olympics at Lillehammer, the skiing federation, the crowning glory of Norwegian sport, went bankrupt.

The remaining three -  On July 7-8, the IOC Executive Board accepted the last three candidatures for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. At that point, it was difficult for them to cut one out.

Frontrunners - The two candidatures that seem strongest are Beijing, linked to Zhangjiakou for the ski races- a centre 204 kilometres beyond the Great Wall - and Almaty. The Chinese capital is cultivating the ambition, which was also that of Stockholm and Munich, of being the first city in the world able to host both the Summer and then the Winter Olympics. The Kazak proposal is very strong because the country is investing a great deal in sport and, at present, can be considered the favourite even if the IOC’s technical report pointed some unsatisfactory situations.

The reasons - Why are there so many opinions against the Olympic dream? Undoubtedly, the Sochi and Rio di Janeiro effects have enlarged the doubts of the populations involved. Bach has continued to clarify that the cost of Sochi was similar to that of Vancouver and should not be confused with the structural investment made by the Russian government. However, despite these words, the public’s impression is that the Olympics are a huge cost and, at this time in the recession, people are rightly afraid of precious resources being squandered. There have been too many examples in the past of scandalous expenses in order to create installations that now look like ruins in the desert.

The remedy - This is why Bach wants to revolutionise the candidature system – by no longer forcing cities to accept the severe directives of the IOC on the  necessary installations, but to also allow cities to put forward a project functional to their own possibilities. To put it briefly, more human candidatures with a balanced final budget. It won’t be easy to make many colleagues, who are spoilt and only think of today without a minimum regard for the future, change their minds. The Olympic future will have to foresee the optimal exploitation of existing installations and provisional plants that can be dismantled so that the negative effects on the population after the end of the Olympic festival can be avoided. The inheritance should bring well-being, not hardship.

Photo with Carrington and Estanguet: Richard Petit