Who would've believed that ? Last February, the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games were close to going from dream to nightmare, from reality to fiction. They narrowly escaped the worst, an outright cancellation. They could have gone down in history, with a capital H, as the first Games to be wiped off the map since the end of the Second World War.
The revelation comes from a credible actor in the Olympic movement. Thomas Bach himself. The President of the IOC. The German leader explained it bluntly to the channel CNN, as part of a interview intended for broadcast Money Switzerland. From his office in Lausanne, Thomas Bach dropped a bombshell by confiding that the PyeongChang Games could have been canceled due to tension between the United States and North Korea in the final months before the event.
« To cancel the Games, the starting point is not military action, explained Thomas Bach, in reference to North Korean nuclear tests. A cancellation can be triggered when a country expresses its intention not to participate because it believes that the safety of its athletes will not be ensured. And here, I can tell you that the discussions were not always easy, to put it diplomatically."
Thomas Bach recognized it: the PyeongChang Games were “ very close » never to take place. A revelation which sheds new light on the efforts made by the IOC President to facilitate the presence of a North Korean delegation. And, later, his desire to support the effort to bring the two Koreas closer together. He went to Pyongyang at the end of last March, at the invitation of Kim Jong Un, to meet the North Korean leader.
Another subject discussed at length by Thomas Bach in front of the camera CNN : the rejection by the population of Valais of Sion's bid for the 2026 Winter Games. For the IOC, the blow was hard. It says a lot about the image of the Olympic organization in public opinion, particularly in Switzerland, its adopted country.
But Thomas Bach does not believe in a loss of confidence in the Olympic ideal. For the IOC President, the no to the referendum is explained above all by a distorted perception of the Games, their cost, and a lack of awareness of the reforms undertaken to reduce the cost.
« I saw the surveys, and we had contact with the bid committee (from Sion 2026), said Thomas Bach. And there, we were told that three issues had played a major role in the campaign: the first was money, the second was money, and the third was more money. But on this financial question, the IOC contributes its part, because we will contribute to the success of the 2026 Games with aid of 925 million US dollars"
For Thomas Bach, everything would therefore be a matter of communication. Clearly, the IOC is working hard to reduce the cost of the Games and make the event more in tune with the times. But the message is slow to get through. To the question of the tarnished image of an IOC affected by the corruption cases of several of its members (Lamine Diack, Patrick Hickey, Carlos Nuzman, Frankie Fredericks, etc.), the German leader responds: “ I think this issue has taken up more space in the media than among the population."
But the IOC president recognizes it: Sion’s withdrawal from the race for the Winter Games leaves him with a bitter taste. “ There was a referendum, we respect the democratic procedurehe says. Even if we would have liked the arguments of the project leaders to have been heard a little more. But it is a shame that the emotions of the athletes, the magic of the Games and the support for Swiss athletes did not play a more important role. In the end, that’s all that matters. The Games are first and foremost the magic, the athletes, the emotion... It is a shame that all of this has been reduced to a single financial question"
