Moving forward with International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s reform process, Olympic leaders on Saturday backed his proposals for setting up a television channel dedicated to the Games, reshaping the bid city procedure and adding more flexibility to the sports program.
Bach convened a summit of 16 key committee and sports officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, to press ahead with Olympic Agenda 2020, his strategic blueprint for the future.
The leaders supported the platform of changes that Bach will put to a vote at a special committee session to be held in Monaco on Dec. 8 and 9. Bach, who was elected to succeed former committee head Jacques Rogge in September last year, has moved swiftly to enact his new policies in his first year in office.
The creation of a TV channel that would promote Olympic sports in the years between the games and help connect the competition to younger people is one of Bach’s main projects.
The officials at Saturday’s meeting backed the idea, “recognizing the potential to greatly increase the presence of sports and the promotion of the Olympic values year round and worldwide,” the committee said in a statement.
Details of the project have yet to be announced, although the committee has said it would act as a “curator or moderator” to develop digital content, using the National Geographic Channel as a model. Sports federations, national Olympic committees, broadcasters and sponsors would be asked to take part.
The summit also produced agreement on a new procedure for cities bidding to host the Olympics. This has become a main priority in light of the reluctance of potential host cities to bid for the Games after being scared off by the US$51 billion price tag associated with this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The body said the new process would give “more flexibility” to bidding cities, allowing them to focus from the start on the long-term benefits the Games can bring to the area and how the tournament can fit into their development plans. The committee and sports federations should also be “flexible and open to reasonable adaptation” to the bid concept.
Any changes would go into effect for the bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Potential bids could come from cities in the US, France, Italy, Turkey, Qatar and South Africa.
The Olympic authority is determined to make changes in the wake of the troubled race for the 2022 Winter Games, in which cities in Switzerland and Germany have abandoned plans to bid after voters said “no” to the idea in referendums, while three other contender cities have pulled out. Only three candidates remain: Almaty in Kazakhstan, Beijing and Oslo, and the future of the Norwegian bid is uncertain amid political and public opposition.
The officials also backed a more flexible approach on the Olympic sports program, focusing on “an event-based rather than a sport-based approach.” That would allow for more changes in disciplines and events within the sports, keeping to the current limit of 10,500 athletes.
The leaders also reviewed the US$20 million fund set up by the governing body to combat doping and match-fixing, with US$10 million dedicated to each issue. The World-Anti-Doping Agency is seeking to convince governments to match the US$10 million figure for drug testing research.
The summit agreed on creation of an online database to coordinate the busy global sports calendar and discussed setting up an “intelligence system” to monitor good governance in the Olympic movement.
There was no mention of reinstating member visits to bid cities or raising the current age limit of 70 for committee members, two ideas that appear to have been ruled out.
Formal proposals are to be drawn up by the committee’s executive board in October before being put to the full membership in Monaco.
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