Thomas Bach has a smile. The IOC President held a press conference this Friday, February 7, a few hours before opening the door to the Fisht stadium, venue for the opening ceremony of the Sochi Games. Relaxed, he played trick questions with a consummate sense of dodging, a legacy of his years as a fencer. And shared with an abundantly packed room his optimism about these 2014 Winter Games, his first at the head of the Olympic institution.
“The sun is shining on Sochi and on the athletes,” said Thomas Bach. An IOC President proud to be able to announce to the media around the world the first records of the Games: 87 national Olympic committees represented, television broadcast in more than 200 countries or territories, 75.000 hours of retransmission. A final figure which would, assures Thomas Bach, be higher than that recorded in 2008 at the Beijing Summer Games. “Proof that the Winter Olympics are becoming more and more universal,” he suggests.
Asked about the omnipresence of Vladimir Putin and the risk of seeing him use the opening ceremony as a propaganda tool, Thomas Bach wanted to be reassuring: “The Olympic charter is very clear: he can only say one sentence . And he will do it like all the others have done, with the exception of one, who violated the Olympic charter at the time. It was in Salt Lake City in 2002.” The “culprit” was named George W. Bush. He had talked too much. The IOC has not forgotten.
Confident in the future, in the very short term as well as for the years to come, Thomas Bach is much less confident about the desire displayed by the IOC to reduce the cost of Olympic candidacies. “We need to find a way to reduce the costs that cities incur to win the Games. But the problem is that we do not control this spending, the German leader explained at length. At the IOC, we don’t need all this extravagance in presenting candidates. We also don't need all this high technology deployed by everyone. We are not asking for anything like that. We only ask for a solid technical file and financial guarantees. But it is the candidate countries that want to spend so much to make people talk about them and promote their city. We inspect application accounts. But how can we impose spending controls when a bid team is assisted by 250 state employees seconded to it? Their salaries will never appear in the accounts…”
Obviously, the matter is close to his heart. But Thomas Bach has not yet found the miracle recipe to push the candidate cities to be more moderate in their spending.
