IOC

AI comes to the IOC and says it and Olympic movement need, uh-oh, 'radical overhaul'

AI comes to the IOC and says it and Olympic movement need, uh-oh, 'radical overhaul'

MUMBAI – International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s manta, change or be changed, is apt. 

The challenge facing the IOC, the Olympic Games, indeed the wider Olympic movement, is both fundamental and existential. All of it is a 19th-century construct. Owing to broadcast television, U.S.-driven corporate sponsorship and, to some extent, Cold War rivalries, it found its footing in the 20th century. Now it is struggling to find a way in our 21st century. 

Television ratings are down. The sponsor program needs a far-reaching re-do. Change is not an option. It’s a must. It’s why, as part of his speech Saturday night here opening the IOC’s 141st session, Bach for the first time made extensive reference to the possibilities of artificial intelligence and, too, announced the IOC would study the creation of an “Olympic Esports Games.”

Change is one thing. But the IOC is furiously slapping at different currents, trying to find direction, not least about its own rules and about whether Bach or someone else ought to be in charge come 2025, when Bach, in theory, is due to step down.

Is the Olympic movement at a history-making inflection point?

Is the Olympic movement at a history-making inflection point?

Is the Olympic movement at an inflection point?

Let’s face it, the Games are prone to strong sentiments and strong statements. It’s easy to get swept away by the passion and the emotion that the Olympics evoke – after all, that’s the source of their appeal. 

But if that question has ever been worth asking, perhaps it’s now.

This week, on September 10, it will be a full 10 years since Thomas Bach was elected president of the International Olympic Committee.

The IOC president v. the sheikh: hardball, as real as it gets

The IOC president v. the sheikh: hardball, as real as it gets

A shockwave of epic proportions boomed out Thursday across the Olympic world. 

The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, opted to take on – with the obvious goal of taking out – Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, the kingmaker once and perhaps again. 

The obvious question: why? The follow-on: will Bach succeed? The IOC president is nothing if not intelligent and calculated. Then again, so is the sheikh.

The IOC confronts a changing, emerging, new world order -- and loses. Now what?

The IOC confronts a changing, emerging, new world order -- and loses. Now what?

For nearly 10 years, since he was elected president of the International Olympic Committee, it has been a rare thing for Thomas Bach to be told no. 

And for good reason. Despite his many vocal critics, almost all of whom have little to no idea how the IOC or the Olympic movement works in the real world, history will likely record Bach as the most consequential IOC president other than Juan Antonio Samaranch. Perhaps even more so.

Bach’s mantra is simple: change or be changed. He has sought to drag a traditional, conservative, European-oriented institution into the 21st century. He can claim considerable success, implementing major reforms, including the end of the corruption-plagued host-city elections.

Thus what happened Saturday, at an election for the presidency of the Olympic Council of Asia, amounts to the first signs of what may well be not just restlessness but pushback if not potent insurrection in the Olympic movement – one year ahead of Paris 2024 and two years before Bach is due to step down as president.

War? Good for absolutely nothing. Myopic focus on one, the "globalization of indifference'

War? Good for absolutely nothing. Myopic focus on one, the "globalization of indifference'

So much of our world is mired in inhumanity. 

The west seemingly can only see Ukraine. But the past 10 years have brought a paradigm shift, one that is now all but hiding in plain sign — one about which the International Olympic Committee, to its credit, recognized and, for once, has been ahead of trend.

If only the most vocal, the most strident, politicians in the west would wake up and see what is right there.

If only the western world would, as an NPR report in December acknowledged, devote perhaps more than 1% of its media coverage to what’s what.

If only these politicians and the media could confront, would at least acknowledge, the bias and the flat-out racism. Because all human beings deserve a common measure of dignity. Everyone.

As the president of the International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, said in opening arguably that sport’s preeminent tour event, the Paris Grand Slam, over the weekend, “War and politics cannot divide sport and cannot divide us. Sport and religion bring the most important values of society, which promote principles of respect, solidarity and peace. Sport is the last bridge, which today in the world’s confrontations can be a messenger for peace and unity and can work for reconciliation.”

As the tradition says: may Alex Gilady's memory be a blessing

As the tradition says: may Alex Gilady's memory be a blessing

I was in touch by text message late last week with Alex Gilady. And now he’s gone. He died Wednesday, in London, of cancer. As is the way in Jewish tradition, his funeral was scheduled as soon as could be, at noon Friday, back in Israel, in Ramat HaSharon, near Tel Aviv.

Alex lived life. When our time comes, how many of us can say this? Alex loved hanging out in London (especially at Wimbledon): he thoroughly enjoyed the late summer along Spain’s Costa Brava; he inevitably managed to find something about every place he was, wherever it was. To be with him was to understand that life is indisputably, unequivocally for living. Dressed impeccably? Inevitably. A good bottle of red? Sure. A story, a discussion, maybe even a point or three to contest? Why not?

With him closes a chapter of history. His passing marks an occasion of deep, profound sadness.

For me, the sadness is particularly personal.

A Russian dilemma: is an athlete ban morally 'right'? Is it lawful?

A Russian dilemma: is an athlete ban morally 'right'? Is it lawful?

The International Olympic Committee this week moved to isolate Russia, including Russian athletes, from international sport.

The reason for this move is clear. It’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24. So there is no mistake, no equivocating about language — it’s, from the words of the IOC’s news release itself, the “current war in Ukraine.” It’s the war. The war puts the Olympic movement, the release said, in a “dilemma.” The statement uses the word “dilemma” four times.

To be clear, what Russia has done in launching this war is horrific and reprehensible. The IOC also took the step of stripping the Russian president, Vladimir Putin — and two others, including the head of the Sochi 2014 Games, Dmitry Chernyshenko — of the highest Olympic prize, the Olympic Order. That’s entirely appropriate.

Is what the IOC did in moving Monday to ban Russian athletes an act of moral leadership? The right thing to do? In the west, overwhelmingly, the answer is easy. Yes.

Straight talk: Michael Payne's 'Toon In!' is required reading

Straight talk: Michael Payne's 'Toon In!' is required reading

Michael Payne, the International Olympic Committee’s former marketing director, and I like to use the same phrase for the chicken-little hysteria that besets far too much of the reporting, particularly in the western media, and especially the American press, in the days and weeks immediately preceding an edition of a Games.

It’s ‘FUD’ — fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Part of this is because the International Olympic Committee does such a tremendously poor job of telling its story — which ought to the easiest story in the world to tell, of the celebration of humanity — and, as a corollary, the story of its history.

Every institution has ups and downs. Olympic history, for sure. When the IOC makes itself as easy to beat as a piñata, of course people are going to take aim.

For all the countless words devoted over more than a century to Olympic history, perhaps no volume better tells the story of what truly is, and has been, what’s what about the Games and the IOC than Payne’s take, Toon In!, a collection of incredible editorial cartoons accompanied by his insightful and often first-hand analysis.

Jacques Rogge, a figure of humanity and stability

Jacques Rogge, a figure of humanity and stability

Jacques Rogge, the eighth president of the International Olympic Committee, has died, the International Olympic Committee announced Sunday, and now closes a chapter in Olympic history.

He was 79.

The fullness of time, as it always does, will tell all.

For now, it is enough to say that Rogge was a bridge — a figure of humanity and stability — between arguably the most important of the IOC presidents, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and the ninth and current president, Thomas Bach, who against considerable currents is vigorously trying to institute a series of reforms aimed at pulling the original 19th century construct that is the IOC into the 21st century.

The IOC's new way brings the done deal of Brisbane for 2032

The IOC's new way brings the done deal of Brisbane for 2032

TOKYO — The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday confirmed Brisbane, Australia, for the 2032 Summer Games. No surprise. This deal was done months ago.

In contrast to the prior city selection process, global spectacles that would match cities against each other, contests running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, this was the IOC’s — and president Thomas Bach’s — new way of getting the job done.

Quietly, efficiently, a meet-up of a qualified city and an interested franchisor.

Will Brisbane turn out to be great? Who knows? Will the Australians turn another bit of magic, like Sydney in 2000? Who knows? What we do know is that Brisbane and Australia are secure enough, now, for the IOC and Bach to say, OK, let’s do this.

And that’s the thing — security.