Six years and a handful of days. The IOC Agenda 2020, adopted by the 127th session of the Olympic body at the beginning of December 2014 in Monaco, has just celebrated its sixth anniversary. A few days before the end of 2020, it should also reach its goal and have completed one by one the 40 recommendations written in black and white in its resolution.
He should. And he's almost there. According to the IOC, visibly very proud of its progress over the past six years, Agenda 2020 is today 85% of its objective. Very close to the finish line, therefore, but not yet quite in a position to raise both arms to the sky.
As a reminder, Thomas Bach convened an extraordinary session of the IOC in December 2014, in Monaco, to immediately draft the road map for the two upcoming Olympics. Freshly elected to the presidency of the body, the German leader wanted to set the tone. The slogan was contained in a formula: “Change or be changed”.
Six years have passed. The picture is not yet complete, but the results are visible. The IOC does not hide them, it even goes so far as to flaunt them widely.
The Games, first. The IOC reformed the method of awarding the event, with the creation of two commissions of future hosts, for winter and for summer. The procedure is intended to be more concerted and more targeted. But it hasn't really been launched yet. And its calendar remains vague, not to say obscure.
Still in terms of the Games, the IOC announces savings of around $4,58 billion made over the last seven years for Tokyo 2020. Very strong. But, at the same time, the bill for the event has almost doubled compared to the budget presented by the Japanese in the application phase.
Still in the Games department, the number of participants in Paris in 2024 will be reduced by around 1.000 people, athletes and officials, compared to Tokyo 2020. It is also expected that 95% of the sites used by Paris 2024 will be existing or temporary. Four years later, Los Angeles 2028 will do even better, with no new permanent site planned in California.
Parity now. It figured prominently among the resolutions of Agenda 2020. It will be achieved at the Paris 2024 Games, with exactly the same number of men and women competing. The number of mixed events increased from eight before the adoption of Olympic Agenda 2020 (London 2012) to 18 for Tokyo 2020, then 22 for Paris 2024.
In institutions, on the other hand, the train is late. Only two international federations are chaired by women for summer sports: Marisol Casado at World Triathlon and Annika Sörenstam at the International Golf Federation (IGF). Today, 37,5% of IOC members are women. They were only 21% at the launch of Olympic Agenda 2020.
Athletes now. More than 100.000 Olympians have registered on Athlete365, a centralized multilingual platform that offers tailored programs and resources in six languages. At the same time, 5.500 athletes benefited, during the first year, from support programs in the areas of dual careers, career transition and mental health.
The number of international federations with athlete protection policies increased from just one in 2016 to 33 in 2020. Impressive. But the Olympic movement no longer counts cases of harassment in high-level sport. They feed the news at an increasing rate.
Governance, finally. The IOC readily puts this forward: the independence of its ethics commission has been strengthened, its president – Ban Ki-moon, the former secretary general of the United Nations – and its members now being elected by the IOC session. The majority of the members of this commission have no connection with the sports movement.
But the recent revelations of corruption at the International Weightlifting Federation, where the Hungarian Tamas Ajan was able to impose his methods for two decades with complete impunity, and the AIBA saga, demonstrate that the road remains long.
In December 2014, the IOC reiterated in Agenda 2020 its project to create an Olympic channel. A sea serpent, the skeptics had murmured. The Olympic Channel was born. It was launched on the evening of the closing of the Rio 2016 Games.
Since then, she has recorded approximately 3,4 billion video views across all platforms, created more than 25.000 athlete-centric articles, and produced more than 76 original series and films. Around 75% of his social media followers are under 35 years old.
« Agenda 2020 changed the Olympic Games, the IOC and the Olympic movement. suggests Thomas Bach today. For sure. The German leader can rub his hands: he also assured him a second four-year term for which he will not have the slightest competition.
