No doubt about it: Budapest was the place to be last week for the leaders of the Olympic movement. Thomas Bach was not mistaken. In a single weekend, the IOC President was able to attend the last two days of the World Athletics Championships, meet Hungarian Olympic officials – NOC President Zsolt Gyulay and IOC Athletes’ Commission member Dániel Gyurta – be received by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and even take part in a World Athletics Board meeting (photo above). As a bonus, Thomas Bach took advantage of his stay to meet, briefly or at length, a very respectable number of members of the Olympic body, all present in one capacity or another in the Hungarian capital. The IOC has drawn up an impressive list: Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch and Marisol Casado, Morocco’s Nawal El Moutawakel, Algeria’s Mustapha Berraf, France’s Guy Drut and David Lappartient, Croatia’s Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Senegal’s Mamadou Ndiaye, China’s Hong Zhang, Cuba’s Maria Colón, Brazil’s Bernard Rajzman and Slovakia’s Danka Bartekova. Last but not least, Thomas Bach found time for talks with Italy’s Francesco Ricci Bitti, President of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), and South Africa’s Sam Ramsamy, Honorary Member of the IOC.
