A Serb succeeds a Taiwanese. A wrestler replaces a boxer. Nenad Lalovic, 59, president of the International Wrestling Federation, will slide his imposing figure into the holy of holies of the Olympic movement at the beginning of next month in PyeongChang: the IOC Executive Board.
The Serbian leader was elected by his peers, the 28 members of the Association of International Summer Olympic Sports Federations (ASOIF), to take the seat left vacant by CK Wu, the former boss of the AIBA, forced to resign last November after being outvoted within his own organization. ASOIF announced this on Thursday January 25 via a press release, where it was specified that two rounds of voting were necessary to produce a winner.
The process was launched at the beginning of the month. ASOIF contacted the IOC members sitting in the college of international federations. Three of them responded to the call for applications: the Spaniard Marisol Casado, president of the International Triathlon Federation (ITU), who joined the IOC in 2010; the Frenchman Jean-Christophe Rolland, head of world rowing (FISA), member of the Olympic organization since the Lima session last September; the Serbian Nenad Lalovic, inducted at the Kuala Lumpur session in August 2015.
At the end of the two rounds of voting, the president of the International Wrestling Federation (UWW) won. He will be proposed as a new member of the IOC Executive Board during the next session, scheduled for early February, before the opening of the PyeongChang 2018 Games.
At almost 60 years old, Nenad Lalovic has been on a meteor trajectory for several years. In 2013, he was called to the rescue to preside over world wrestling, after the IOC's decision to push the discipline outside the Olympic scope. In just a few months, he averted the danger and ensured his sport retained its place on the Summer Games program.
In August 2015, the IOC members accepted him among them at the IOC session. Less than three years later, he was admitted to the decision-making body, the executive commission, where he will represent ASOIF.
A former mechanical engineer, graduated from the University of Novi Sad, the Serb presents a very atypical profile. The official IOC website specifies in his biography that Nenad Lalovic founded his own tennis club in Serbia, then became a professional producer of natural shampoo, before becoming a partner in a construction company, then finally an exclusive importer of cars and motorcycles. of the Suzuki brand in Serbia.
