It's hard not to want to read between the lines. As a preamble to its extraordinary session, scheduled for today and tomorrow (July 3 and 4) in Lausanne, the IOC has chosen nine new members. A small colony of candidates nominated on Tuesday July 2 by the executive commission of the Olympic institution to be presented, and certainly elected, during the General Assembly on September 10, 2013 in Buenos Aires.
Among its future new members, two names known to athletics fans: the Swede Stefan Holm, Olympic high jump champion in 2004 in Athens, and the Kenyan Paul Tergat, five-time world cross-country champion. Three presidents of national Olympic committees: the American Larry Probst, the Russian Alexander Zhukov (former Prime Minister of Russia) and the Romanian Octavian Morariu. Finally, four characters with a less illustrious pedigree: the Brazilian Bernard Rajzman (a former volleyball player, member of the Brazilian Olympic committee), the Filipino Mikaela Maria Antonia Cojuangco-Jaworski (a former horse rider who became an actress and television presenter), the Ethiopian Dagmawit Girmay Berhane (general secretary of the Ethiopian Olympic committee), and the Dutchman Camiel Eurlings (the former boss of the KLM airline, member of the Christian Democratic Party).
A notable absentee: Bernard Lapasset, the president of the International Rugby Federation (IRB), new strong man in international relations of French sport. Expected to be on the list, it is not there. “With the arrival of Tony Estanguet among the four new members elected at the London Games, that would have made too many French people at the IOC,” suggests someone close to the matter. With Guy Drut and Jean-Claude Killy, already in place, plus Tony Estanguet, France would have had four with the arrival of Bernard Lapasset.
Innocuous? Surely not. By proposing these nine new entrants, not the least of which is French-speaking, the IOC Executive Board has not only decided to increase the number of its members to 113, two less than the limit set by the statutes of the institution. Above all, it increased the number of Americans in its General Assembly to four. Larry Probst joins Anita DeFrantz, Jim Easton and Angela Ruggiero. An arrival which places the United States in a position of strength at a time when the candidacy of an American city, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, even Tampa or Dallas, for the Summer Games is becoming increasingly clear. 2024.
Long considered tense, for purely commercial reasons, relations between the IOC and the USOC, the American Olympic Committee, now seem to be in good shape. In the short term, the effects of this improvement are still difficult to guess. Larry Probst, like his eight peers, will officially become a member of the IOC during the session of the Olympic body in Buenos Aires from September 7 to 10. He will not be able to vote for the next president of the IOC, for the host city of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games and for the sport which will join the Olympic program after the Rio Olympics, three issues where the American position still appears quite vague. . But he will have the right to vote four years later, for the choice of the city for the 2024 Summer Games. An election for which the United States has not yet designated its candidate, but she is already a favorite.
