Seven candidates, including former British Olympic champion Sebastian Coe, will run in March 2025 to succeed German Thomas Bach as head of the International Olympic Committee, the IOC announced on Monday.
Bach, who has headed the international body since 2013, announced after the Paris Olympics his intention to hand over the reins.
Review of the contenders, who will be decided during the 143rd session scheduled from March 18 to 21 in Athens.
Tipped for years to lead the Olympic world, the double Olympic champion of the 1,500 has his sporting aura, a media surface reinforced by the power of the English-speaking press, as well as a long career as a leader: organizer of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, British Conservative MP, president of the British Olympic Committee then world boss of athletics, the number one Olympic sport.
Sebastian Coe can boast of having straightened out World Athletics since 2015, an organization that was weighed down by his predecessor Lamine Diack, who was convicted for his involvement in the cover-up of Russian doping. But he has also attracted enemies by deciding to award bonuses to gold medallists at the Paris Olympics, without consulting anyone, while most international federations cannot keep up financially.
His uncompromising positions, including the outright banning of Russian athletes since the start of the war in Ukraine, also contrast with Thomas Bach’s concern for consensus, who had reinstated them under a neutral banner at the request of part of the Olympic world.
If there is one candidate who will not need to make a name for himself, it is the son of the former emblematic head of the IOC Juan Antonio Samaranch, whose long reign (1980-2001) remains associated with the explosion of Olympic revenues, but also with controversial governance.
At 64, the Spaniard has no athletic background but is serving as IOC vice-president for the second time (2016-2020 and since 2022), and closely follows marketing issues and the Winter Olympics.
A 41-year-old former swimmer, Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry has an impressive Olympic record – 7 medals including 2 gold in 5 editions -, government experience (Minister of Sports), as well as a meteoric rise within the Lausanne body: having joined in 2013, she chaired the athletes’ commission, has sat on the executive committee since 2018, has taken an interest in questions of finance and Olympic solidarity, and heads the coordination commission for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane.
David Lappartient, who took over the French Olympic Committee (CNOSF) in the midst of the crisis in June 2023, has also been president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) since 2017. At the IOC, he chairs the e-sports commission. He was also the architect of the French Alps’ bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics. But unlike Thomas Bach, he is not an Olympian, nor even a former high-level athlete.
Feisal has been president of the Jordanian Olympic Committee since 2003 and an IOC member since 2010. He joined the Executive Committee in 2019 and, since 2023, has been working on issues of prevention of harassment and abuse in sport, as well as gender equality and inclusiveness. Occasionally, he has served as the regent of the Kingdom of Jordan during trips outside the country by his brother, King Abdullah II.
President of the International Ski Federation since 2021, British-Swedish Johan Eliasch is also head of sports equipment manufacturer Head. He has long been involved in environmental protection and has just joined the IOC, in July 2024.
The Japanese Watanabe, president of the International Gymnastics Federation, had been entrusted with a delicate mission before Tokyo: to lead the “task force” responsible for organizing the Olympic boxing tournament in place of the IBA, which had been deregistered for poor governance. A member of the executive board, he spoke in October 2023, during the IOC session in Bombay, to qualify the calls from several members for Bach to extend. Behind the diplomatic language, he had indeed called on the German to give up his place in the name of the image of the Olympic movement.
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