Sports must acknowledge its relationship to politics and big business and work with those who run global society, while still maintaining its neutrality, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said yesterday.
In a speech at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, Bach said those relationships must be based on mutual respect. Global political and business leaders need to respect the autonomy of sporting bodies or risk diminishing their positive influence, he added.
“In the past, some have said that sport has nothing to do with politics, or they have said that sport has nothing to do with money or business,” Bach said. “And this is just an attitude which is wrong... We are living in the middle of society and that means that we have to partner up with the politicians who run this world.”
Bach cited the universal application of competition regulations as an example of sports’ ability to function as a sort of international law helping promote global peace and development. Allowing countries to set their own rules, in soccer or athletics for example, would mean that “international sport is over,” he said.
“So we need this worldwide application of our rules to ensure also in the future that sport remains this international phenomenon which only sport can offer,” Bach said.
Bach said managing the links between sports, business and politics has been a central theme of his first year in office, during which he has met with 81 heads of state and government. He cited the committee’s relationship with the UN as particularly successful, calling UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a “great friend of the Olympic movement and with whom we really enjoy an outstanding partnership and relationship.”
The sides last year signed an agreement to explore ways in which sport could support global development and Ban attended the Sochi Winter Games and the Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China, last month.
Bach has tried to embed his new approach through a blueprint for reform called “Olympic Agenda 2020,” which envisions a more flexible Olympic bidding process and sports program, lower costs for hosting the games, and the creation of a digital channel to promote Olympic sports and values such as fair play.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier