Things are changing at the IOC. They really change, not just in words. The development benefits some, including athletes, more listened to than ever, women, better represented than in the past, non-Olympic sports, less ostracized than over the last decade. But this new wind, blown for more than two years by Thomas Bach, is claiming its share of victims. The last two are Gianni Infantino and Sebastian Coe.
Friday June 3, 2016, the IOC Commission announced on the third day of its last meeting before the Rio Games a list of eight “proposed” members to join the Olympic organization next August. Eight names which, barring unlikely rejection, will all be accepted within the IOC during the session planned on the sidelines of the 2016 Olympic Games. As a reminder, this contingent of eight future members, four men and as many women, is made up of the Indian Nita Ambani, founder and president of the Reliance Foundation; the Finn Sari Essayah, chairwoman of the Finnish Christian Democratic Party; the Italian Ivo Ferriani, president of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation; the Colombian Luis Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank; the representative of Papua New Guinea Auvita Rapilla, member of the ANOC executive committee; the South African Anant Singh, film producer and director; the Canadian Tricia Smith, President of the Canadian Olympic Committee; the Austrian Karl Stoss, president of the Austrian Olympic Committee.
Eight names. Two big absentees: Gianni Infantino and Sebastian Coe. The FIFA president and his IAAF counterpart will not join the IOC in August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Football, the richest sport on the planet, and athletics, the first Olympic sport, will not be represented by their respective presidents within the organization. A first. Sepp Blatter, Gianni Infantino's predecessor, was a member of the IOC between 1999 and 2015. Before him, the Brazilian Joao Havelange had served in Lausanne between 1963 and 2011. Same observation at the IAAF: Lamine Diack, the Senegalese to whom Sebastian Coe took over last August, was a member of the IOC between 1999 and his resignation in November 2015. The Italian Primo Nebiolo had, before him, represented the IAAF within the five-ringed organization.
Certainly, the two men were told that they would be given a second chance in September 2017. The IOC must co-opt a new battalion of members during the session in Lima, Peru, where the host city of the 2024 Games. A list which should, in all likelihood, include a significant number of presidents of international federations. Gianni Infantino and Sebastian Coe could be there, provided that the wind of business finally moves away from the surroundings of their office, in Zurich for the first, in Monaco for the second. Brian Cookson, Jean-Christophe Rolland and David Haggerty, respectively presidents of the international cycling (UCI), rowing (FISA) and tennis (ITF) federations, could also be invited to join the IOC. An invitation which could also arrive in the mailbox of the next president of the ISU, whose identity will be known at the end of the week.
Seb Coe and Gianni Infantino will have to wait a long year. In itself, nothing dramatic. The two men have enough to do, in these difficult times for football and athletics, not to risk finding the time long and getting bored of IOC meetings. But their absence from the list of new promotions has symbolic value. It illustrates the IOC's desire to wash cleaner than in the past, at the risk of doing without notable personalities. A desire also demonstrated by the urgency to exclude from the Games as many athletes as possible convinced of doping in Beijing 2008 and/or London 2012.
While waiting for Lima 2017, FIFA and the IAAF are not absent from the Olympic organization. Africans Issa Hayatou and Lydia Nsekera, respectively vice-president and member of the FIFA Council, sit on the IOC. The IAAF is even better represented, with its first vice-president, Sergey Bubka, and two Council members, Nawal El Moutawakel and Frank Fredericks, present on the executive board. But for the Swiss as for the Briton, this absence sounds like a form of punishment.
