During the conference in Aarhus which I attended a month ago, not surprisingly the reform process at FIFA was prominent on the agenda.  It was the topic for a major plenary session and it caused several additional debates.  As I noted in a couple of my own interventions, what happens in FIFA is extremely important well beyond the world of football.  It is the dominating sport in the world, with more media exposure and supporter interest than any other sport, and there are vast amounts of money involved, both in the major international events and at the national level.

So the problems with corruption and terrible mismanagement of the operations and the vast resources of FIFA constitute a concern for the image of all sports and serve as a bad example and an excuse for many other sports, such as handball.  It is disgraceful to hear the IHF president proudly talk about Sepp Blatter as a role model.  Many of the perennial problems with FIFA involve abuse of power and bribery at a personal level among its top figures.  The biggest scandal involved the FIFA marketing partner ISL, through which millions of dollars were paid in bribes to senior officials in FIFA (and the IOC).  Former FIFA President Havelange, and Executive members Teixeira, Leoz and Hayatou were among the main recipients of illicit payments.  President Blatter has somehow managed to ensure a lack of evidence against him.

In separate scandals related to the election of the FIFA Executive Committee and the bidding for the hosting of the World Cup, two other top figures Bin Hammam and Warner got caught more recently.  But the corruption is much more widespread, and the far from democratic election procedures and the bribery-prone processes for the selection of World Cup hosts were always based on shady practices.  The sudden idea of selection hosts for 2018 and 2022 at the same time caused the culmination of shenanigans and accusations.  When Qatar and Russia, whose resources seemed to be as unlimited as their ambitions, came out as the winners ahead of the favored candidates, then ‘all hell broke loose’.  And the notion of playing a World Championship in the heat of the summer was perhaps the real trigger for suspicions and protests.

So in 2011, FIFA found it necessary to establish, with great fanfare, a temporary Independent Governance Committee (IGC) to oversee the creation of a framework for good governance and controls.  Some recommendations were already accepted at the FIFA Congresses in 2012 and 2013, and others are supposedly planned to follow.  But the whole process has been controversial and the sincerity has been questioned.  An intended key player, Transparency International, bailed out from the process almost at the outset, because they did not want to risk their reputation by ‘being involved in a process lacking in credibility’.  The Chair of ICG, Mark Pieth, was initially enthusiastic and optimistic, but when he now spoke at ‘Play the Game’, just before his affiliation with FIFA is ending, he sounded rather more frustrated and said that ‘he had overestimated FIFA’s will for change’!

So what has then been achieved so far?  A Code of Ethics and a supposedly independent Ethics Committee, with separate investigatory and adjudicatory chambers, have been established.  The structure and resources are in place, and FIFA wants to note that the first investigations of misconduct have already been concluded with sanctions as a result.  But the true power and real independence can only be assessed over the longer term.  A revised Audit & Compliance Committee is now in place, with an experienced outsider in charge, and a confidential reporting mechanism (‘whistleblower hotline’) has been activated.    Integrity checks for key officials have been approved.  Apart from these structural aspects, FIFA also emphasizes that, for the first time, a woman has been elected (and two more women have been ‘co-opted’) to the Executive Committee.  But observers note that, on a scale from 0 to 100, these measures only bring FIFA to about 50-55 in terms of overall good governance practices.  Even if all the ICG recommendations one day were to be implemented, it would only bring FIFA to mediocre level of 70, i.e., just short of the rating for the IOC, not exactly a model of excellence in this respect…

Among the many ICG recommendations which have not been implemented, one could mention term limits for the Executive, a committee with external participation that would overlook FIFA compensation practices, salary disclosure, adoption of best-practice anti-corruption standards, guidelines for avoiding conflicts of interest, financial disclosures at all levels of FIFA and its members organizations, transparency in investigatory processes, and adoption of democratic procedures in FIFA election processes.  These are of course rather fundamental aspects of good governance, and the observed reluctance among FIFA Executives, and particularly Blatter himself, to move ahead on these fronts is quite telling.  Where does this then leave us, in an organization that remains under the firm control of a very tight ‘old boys’ network’ and with a president who does not wish to deny his interest in running for re-election yet again in 2015?

With the ICG recommendations left in the hands of these persons, who have shown no genuine interest in affecting major change, in reducing their personal enrichment, or in shedding light on past problems, how optimistic can one be!?   There are many ‘skeletons in the closet’, for instance from the ISL scandal, and many FIFA Executives are likely to be desperate to keep the lid on.  In fact, one of the main objections from Transparency International was precisely FIFA’s refusal to investigate unresolved problems from the past.  Even the FIFA Communications Director, Walter de Gregorio, who was present in Aarhus and had a hard time in putting the right spin on matters from a FIFA perspective, admitted that “FIFA made a lot of mistakes in the past”.  Can the reform process really be credible, if the decision-makers refuse to own up to these mistakes?

 

During the next couple of months, I will present some tidbits of observations from the ‘Play the Game’ conference which I recently attended.  As I hope some of you have become aware in recent years, when I have made references to the work of this organization, it is the one group in the world of sport, whose efforts in the areas of governance and anti-corruption I really respect and support.  Apart from its continuous efforts, ‘Play the Game’ organizes a global conference every two years.   This time it was held at their home base in Aarhus, Denmark.  Around 400 journalists, sports officials and academics from around the world attended.

The coverage includes a broad spectrum of topics, beyond the general issues of governance, ethics, and corruption in national and international sports organizations. The many problems discovered within the realm of the IOC and especially in FIFA have had a lot of exposure.  Doping-related topics have figured prominently on the agenda for many years now, and the Lance Armstrong affair has only served to increase the concerns regarding doping.  Match fixing has emerged as another core issue, in light of the ever-increasing number of discoveries of such problems in different sports around the globe.

But many issues also relate to the tension or competition between, on the one hand, resources and facilities for sports activities for the masses and, on the other hand, the enormous resources spent on events and stadiums for events such as the OIympic Games and the World Cup in soccer.  Are we catering too much to passive spectators in elite events, at the expense of physical education, health, and fitness for both the young and the adults?   And does it remain sensible to incur such huge expenses for one-time events in countries where the overall population sees many of its basic needs go unmet.

This debate has been particularly acute in recent time, considering the massive construction in Sochi for the Winter Olympics, and the national reactions in Brazil regarding the Summer Olympics in 2016 and the World Cup in 2014.  When soccer-crazy Brazil sees violent demonstrations against these events, then that should perhaps be an eye-opener.   The Winter Games in Russia have caused another debate to surface, namely about the impression that only authoritarian regimes with vast resources can genuinely compete for the hosting of such big events.   Similar questions have come up in connection with Qatar’s successful bid for the soccer World Cup in 2022.

But for the moment I will leave you with this overview of some of the topics that I will expand on in subsequent articles.  I will just add a comment that I received from a Russian journalist who attended the ‘Play the Game’ conference.  It is of course a general trend these days that media reporting from sports events focuses on results, statistics, injuries, transfers and cute background stories about star athletes.  But my Russian friend seemed a bit confused or disturbed at one point:  “why are there so many stories and reports about problems and negative issues”, was his question.  Perhaps he had not quite realized beforehand that this is one of the main purposes of the ‘Play the Game’ organization and its conferences.   There is another side of the coin; sports, unfortunately, does not have just a sunny and glossy side.  There are too many people and issues which serve to undermine the benefits and enjoyment of sports.  We need to shine a light on that!

John has already drawn sufficient attention to the presentation I gave under the above rubric at the ‘Play the Game’ conference a couple of weeks ago.  And I offered a preview of the IHF Congress in three articles just before it started.  So in a way there is not much to add now regarding the IHF Congress, as my heading really captures the essence.

There were absolutely no surprises at the IHF Congress.  As I had noted, the President had used different methods to secure the necessary votes well ahead of time.  And this reality was clear to all the Congress participants, including those many who would have liked to see a regime change.  But the IHF president is not a person against whom you launch a battle unless you know that you have a majority of the votes, as he is likely to seek damaging revenge against anyone going up against him.  So there were simply no candidates in opposition to the president and his three colleagues on the Executive Committee.

This limited the ‘excitement’ to the election for the added fifth position on the Executive.  But here the reports from the Congress make it clear that the president had simply let it be known who his preferred candidate was or, better put, the only one for whom he would direct the huge block of votes which he controlled.  The person elected, Frantisek Taborsky of the Czech Republic, a soft-spoken and gentle academic of ‘the old school’, was then not a surprising choice.  Frantisek is a nice person who will not ‘ruffle any feathers’, so the president clearly expects him to be loyal and unlikely to create problems.

All the reports suggest that the Congress swallowed the president’s propaganda speeches, and that nobody seriously questioned why the IHF sets aside such an absurdly small amount of its budget for the development of handball in the small or new handball nations around the world.  Apropos new members, apparently, the president was in a rage when he found that he did not reach the target of 200 member nations, as the final number came out at 199….   Presumably, there will now be a ‘witch hunt’ to determine whose fault this is.

This just confirms that the focus is on the prestige of the numbers, and indirectly also the number of votes that the president can obtain.  It matters less that many of these 199 countries do not really play handball and do not get the support they need and deserve from the IHF.   Similarly, it did not seem to disturb the Congress participants that the amounts of revenue from marketing and sponsors are really pitiful for a sport with the traditions and popularity of handball.  And there are indications that the main sponsor, Adidas, intends to cut back on it support.

It was interesting to be among a large group of sports officials and journalists from especially Denmark and Germany, when the outcome of the IHF Congress was becoming known.  These are, of course, the nations which compete for the honor of having ‘invented’ handball, and our sport has more exposure in these countries than virtually anywhere else.   Moreover, at the end of the Congress, the IHF Council decided to award the hosting of the men’s 2019 World Championship to precisely these two countries.  While there was some enthusiasm about this decision for 2019, it was also quite obvious that most journalists who follow handball know about the basic problems of the IHF.

But they admit that handball and the IHF never get the same exposure as the IOC and FIFA when governance issues and corruption are given some media attention, beyond the normal reporting of match results, player transfers etc.   And to some extent, the defeatist approach of the European Handball Federation and the respective national federations plays a role in that.  When the EHF prefers to focus on its own competitions and affairs instead of taking on the problems at the IHF level, and when the Danish and German federations just ‘turn the other cheek’ and beg the IHF to award a World Championship to them, it becomes more difficult for media to take a lot of interest in all the things that need to change in the global world of handball.  As some journalists commented, “regrettably, we have become far too used to ethics problems and corruption in international sports, so we do not react as strongly as we should.”

 

In the two previous installments (Part 1 and Part 2), I commented on the elections and on issues related to the budget.  In this final pre-Congress article I will make some observations on the ‘motions’ which have been submitted by the Executive Committee and by member federations.  This may seem a rather ‘boring’ topic and I will not get into the small details; instead I will focus more on the overall impression created by these motions.

Motions for Changes in the IHF Statutes

In connection with the previous two Congresses, I strongly criticized the attempts by the IHF president to change the IHF Statutes in ways which were consistently intended to strengthen his power and that of the Executive Committee in totally inappropriate ways, at the expense of all other stakeholders.   On those occasions, several very important provisions were involved, which would have substantially and negatively affected the decision-making process and the operations of the IHF.  Many of these attempts were fortunately resisted by the Congresses and therefore dismissed or modified.

On this occasion, the proposals from the president are relatively more innocent, although only in the sense that they do not involve the ongoing decision-making.  But it is apparent that he cannot just resist the temptation to act in a heavy-handed and top-down fashion, which just confirms his belief in autocracy instead of democracy.  Most of the proposed changes involve new limitations, prohibitions, suspensions and other forms of punishment.  There is also a strong notion of more direct control and interference from the president and the Executive at the level of Continents and National Federations.  Here is the gist of some examples:

– A new clause is being proposed with the suggested intention of protecting the IHF and its member federation from external political influence, clearly in the spirit of the newly elected IOC President, who has always been obsessed with this topic.  It is fine that ‘political influence’ is resisted, but this amounts to hypocrisy when one knows that the IHF has member federations governed by the country’s regime, just like the IOC has many members from ruling families.  Moreover, more external insight is just what the corruption-prone IHF and some its members really do need!

– It is being specified that when continents organize qualifications for the IHF events, these games must be played under the IHF Rules of the Game.  This should be self-evident, as no member federation has the right to deviate from those rules without special permission.  Based on the experience in Asia for the 2008 Olympics, it would seem more important to insist that such events be held with a guarantee of fair play and freedom from manipulation…

– It is proposed that the IHF shall have the right to supervise elections in all member federations, and that they shall be required to invite the IHF president to all congresses of Continental Confederations.   This idea is really laughable or insulting, considering the reputation of the IHF president and the running of the IHF elections.   Moreover, it is proposed that the IHF president should be able to recommend the suspension of a Continental Confederation, its right to be represented in the IHF Council, and its teams participation in IHF events, “if the IHF president deems that the Continental Confederation does not respect normal democratic procedures’!!!   Who is he to judge anyone in such matters??

– You might think that a whole set of proposals regarding an Athletes’ Commission would be a positive step.  But, as I have reminded recently, such a Commission has in theory existed for many, many years, except that the IHF president has not allowed it to work, to meet, to participate in the IHF.  So, even if it is now proposed that the Chair of this Commission should become a member of the IHF Council, the more basic issue is if the Commission is going to be allowed to do meaningful work and have any influence.   Moreover, player representatives have already expressed objections to the idea that the players will not be allowed to nominate their own candidates.   Instead, they will be limited to voting for candidates proposed by the member federations.

Motions from Member Federations on Other Topics

– China and Korea have submitted very similar motions regarding the opportunities for teams from outside Europe to qualify for the Olympic Games.  Currently each continental federation (Europe, Africa, Asia and Panamerica) are guaranteed one participant each. One spot is reserved for the host and the reigning World Champions and the remaining 6 places are awarded in 3 qualification tournaments.  European teams have dominated these qualification tournaments resulting in either 8 or 9 (when Europe hosts) of the 12 nations at the Olympics being European sides.  While this may reflect traditional strengths, it also presents an image of a sport that is not truly global.   China and Korea now want to see at least two entrants from each continent, with a chance for even more non-European teams through qualifying.   The Council has concluded, correctly in my opinion, that this goes too far as it would diminish the quality of the competition.   A more realistic approach might have been to keep the mandatory places remaining unchanged, but with a total of two more slots being reserved for the three continents via the qualifying.  With twelve teams participating in the 3 qualification tournaments, the four non-European nations could simply be placed in the same group.

– Norway is seeking a change in the playing rules.  This is somewhat unusual, as it is normally understood that such changes have a separate process, so the IHF tends to refer proposals to the Rules and Referees Commission.   The motion deals with a genuine issue:  too often it happens that a player tries to fake or exaggerate an injury to get the referees to stop the game, thus avoiding a counterattack for the opponents or simply gaining a tactical stoppage.  So the idea would be that the player would then have to leave the court until there is a change in possession, in the hope that this would discourage the faking.   The idea has some complications, as it equates a ‘fake’ with a genuine injury caused by an opponent, something that may not be so fair.   But what is interesting from a U.S. perspective is that the idea is not new.  It was forcefully pursued by our former federation president Peter Buehning Sr. some 20 years ago.  There was some support at the time, but the IHF concluded then that the complications outweighed the advantages.

In January 2010, I wrote an article with the title ‘Conflict of interest – or worse’. In a nutshell, it had just been revealed in German media that the IHF President had received a personal services contract to the value of 602.000 Euro from Sportfive, the company holding the IHF TV rights for the period 2006-09. The IHF President claimed that the contract involved compensation for actual work that he was performing. This would make the arrangement a matter of poor judgment. But many observers questioned whether there ever was an intention to have work performed for the money, or if it was simply a camouflage for a ‘kickback’, something that would obviously be a much more serious matter. The former IOC President Rogge went public with his displeasure about the story.

Immediately thereafter, allegations about further wrongdoing started appearing. It was recognized that the Sportfive functionaries who had issued the contract had subsequently left Sportfive and started up a rival, UFA Sports. And can you imagine, somehow it was UFA who surprisingly won the TV rights contract away from Sportfive for the period 2010-13! So questions were raised as to whether the personal contract that these people had arranged, had also been intended to gain them some advantages in the bidding process for the new TV rights period. Certainly the new bosses at Sportfive saw reasons to be very suspicious. Could it be that the bidding had been manipulated, something that would amount to an escalation to criminal wrongdoing??

Then nothing much was heard about the matter until late 2011, when there were remarkable media reports about a police search of the IHF offices and the IHF president’s residence in Switzerland, apparently at the request of the authorities in Hamburg, Germany. One would assume that the investigation had been instigated by the new Sportfive management. Documents were seized by the Swiss police, but then nothing has been heard for a long time. People started commenting that it was perhaps not so unusual that documentary evidence would not exist in the case of a bidding manipulation, or that presumably any such evidence would smartly have been hidden elsewhere.

But this week, suddenly news report came out in Switzerland that shed some new light. A court in Bellinzona announced a decision regarding an appeal from the IHF and its president. (See report in the main Swiss daily, Neue Zuercher Zeitung.) Apparently, most of the documents seized in 2011 had been forwarded to Hamburg, but the appeal involved six documents, five of which the Swiss court has now released. One would assume that these documents must have been seen by the IHF as particularly revealing, as their release was so firmly resisted. Accordingly, it will now be interesting to see whether the access to these documents will give new momentum to the investigation by the authorities. And it will be important to observe whether this new turn might make the IHF president nervous or desperate enough to resort to additional methods to cover up the matter, especially considering that we are just one month away from the IHF Congress. While he is unopposed in his bid for re-election, perhaps a firm final conclusion from the German authorities might be the only thing standing in his way!

Most of you are likely to be well aware that Thomas Bach of Germany was indeed elected as the new IOC President at the recent IOC Congress; so no surprises there! The well-oiled machinery of his backers, most prominently Sheikh Ahmad of Kuwait, had done their job in getting the necessary support lined up. I spent some days in Europe, precisely at the time of the elections, so I was in a better position than usual to get reactions through personal contacts and European media.

It seems that during the final stages the only excitement involved the question as to whether Bach would gain an absolute majority among the 93 voting members already in the first round. As it happened, he had to wait until the second round, where he obtained 49 votes. But as had been predicted, the only candidate other than Bach who had a reasonable showing was Richard Carrion from Puerto Rico, the IOC ‘finance minister’. He got 29 votes as compared with the 49 for Bach, whereas the other remaining candidates got between four and six.

The results seemed to confirm that several of the candidacies were totally without any hope, and many are now wondering why these candidates came forward: was it just an ‘ego trip’, or did it for some of them involved a tactical step for some future situation? Indeed, many of those who did not want to see Bach elected tended to regret that his opponents had not been able to unite behind one strong opponent, who could then have stood a better chance to come across as a strong alternative.

What are the likely implications of a Bach presidency?

Many IOC insiders and external observers had expressed the hope that the election would bring about serious change, at a time when many difficult issues are brewing in the world of sports. I am talking about corruption, doping, match-fixing, suspicions regarding the way of awarding events etc. But personally I was never optimistic on that point. Jacques Rogge was never seen as a strong President in this regard, but as I see it, it is more related to the actual role and priorities of the IOC machinery.

It is a mistake to see the IOC as some kind of supervising entity for individual sports and for national sports, with a role in ensuring ethical behavior and good governance. The IOC members do not really have any interest, or any incentives, for getting their hands dirty in this way. The existence of WADA in the area of anti-doping is as far as it gets, and arguments for the establishment of a similar organ to deal with anti-corruption are quickly dismissed.

Instead, I think it comes close to the truth if one describes the IOC as the entity which organizes Olympic Games and serves as a business machinery in doing so. And for this purpose one needs a leader with business experience, a hard-nosed attitude in looking after the interests of the IOC, and a willingness to close eyes and ears to observations and arguments that would get in the way of enriching the IOC. For those who recognize that this is the priority, it seems that Bach would indeed be a great choice.

But many already express concerns that Bach and his supporters, again especially Sheikh Ahmad, who also is the head of ANOC (the Association of National Olympic Committees), will start exercising power in a ruthless and dictatorial way. The skeptics worry that there is not likely to be much room for a serious internal debate or for transparency. Media comments also suggest that the success of different sports and the various countries and regions will depend far too much on how comfortable and able they are to take advantage of such an environment. I would prefer to avoid becoming too pessimistic, and it may be safer to judge the situation on the basis of decisions and initiatives in the next few years.

What does the selection of Tokyo in 2020 suggest regarding possible bids for 2024?

Following the decision to award the 2020 summer Games to Tokyo, and the ascendance of Bach (and Sheikh Ahmad), many potential hosts are now quickly beginning to speculate about the likely impact on bids from various regions and countries for the period beyond 2020. John Ryan already wondered if USA might now be in a good position for 2024, but the prevailing view in Europe seems to be that, following Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, the pendulum would swing back in favor of a European bid.

Of course, the situation regarding the 2022 winter Games will also be relevant. But I really wonder what European country will be prepared to come forward for the 2017 decision on 2024. Perhaps it could give Turkey a second chance, depending on the geopolitics of that region. But many assume that the Sheikh will want the Gulf Region to become the first host from that part of the world. So he just might want to see a USA bid become successful in the meantime… Let the scheming begin!

The International Handball Federation has a really bad track record when it comes to taking athlete representation seriously. The IHF President likes the idea of All-Star Games, voting for the ‘Player of the Year’ etc., but he has never shown any interest in giving the players a voice in the IHF planning and decision-making. On paper, the IHF has had an Athletes’ Commission for a number of years now, but it has never been allowed to function. It was introduced only after there was too much pressure from the IOC to do so. And some form of ‘elections’ of players to the Commission has taken place. (Former USA National Team player Dawn Allinger Lewis has been a member, together with a group of prominent players).

However, during all my years in the IHF, there was never any activity or influence. The Commission was even getting its requests for meetings denied, and it was made rather clear that there views were not sought or wanted. I am unofficially aware of situations where the Athletes’ Commission protested this situation to the IHF President, but the IHF Council (where I was a member during five years) was never officially told about the protest.

Accordingly, it is now rather interesting to see that apparently the IHF President is giving the impression that he wants to change this situation. (See the link in the 16 September Handball News Summary). It even seems to be suggested that, under revised By-Laws, the Athletes’ Commission should have such formal status that its Chair would become a member of the IHF Council, just like the Chairs of the ordinary Commissions. However, while the players have a form of ‘union’ and would be fully capable of putting forward their own candidates, the emerging IHF proposal seems to have the national federations putting forward candidates. Moreover, the idea seems to be that the IHF would thereafter pick and choose among these candidates. In my view, this would be an absurd approach.

However, this approach fits right in with the IHF President’s refusal to recognize clubs and stakeholders in the IHF. Clubs are employers of all the players on the national teams that participate in World Championships and Olympic Games. So, as I have written many time before, the clubs have a very legitimate interest in issues such as the international competition calendar, the compensation to the clubs when the players are taken away from them, insurance matters etc. But the IHF refusals have been taken so far that the clubs, through a number of German Bundesliga clubs, have now felt forced to take legal action to obtain the right to negotiate with the IHF.

Clearly, the IHF President is much more comfortable to deal with individual national federations from a position of power, with an opportunity to divide and conquer, considering the vast differences in experience and interests among national federations around the world. He does not want to deal with the top clubs, as these are generally run by strong managers in a very business-like way. And it now seems clear that he does not want to deal with the players as a group their unions. Instead he prefers to be able to co-opt some of them to give the impression of allowing some kind of real participation. One can only hope that the players do not go along with such methods.

Starting this coming Saturday, the eyes of the sports world will be on Buenos Aires, where the International Olympic Committee will hold its 125th IOC session. This time there will be more suspense than usual, due to confluence of the decision to the taken regarding the host city for the 2020 Summer Olympics, the selection of one of three sports to be the final one included in 2020, and above all, the election of a new President of the IOC to replace Jacques Rogge.

Many of you are likely to be aware that there are three remaining candidates for the 2020 Games, namely Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo. After roughly 20 cities appeared ready to submit bids, there were six coming forward, with Baku, Doha and Rome being the additional three. Rome withdrew the candidacy for financial reasons, and Baku and Doha were eliminated in a preliminary round. Now, I am not in the possession of a crystal ball and I do not personally claim any special insights as to which city is likely to come out as winner. There are lots of indications to be had from betting companies and self-proclaimed experts, but I suspect it will be as exciting as always in the past, with some room for surprises.

My only take on it is that this time it seems likely that instead of selecting one of the cities for positive reasons, we are more likely to find that the IOC members will see it as a process of eliminating candidates for negative reasons. Istanbul would want to see it as giving an edge that they are the first serious candidate from their region, but in these days of unrest in many neighboring countries, this may instead turn out to be a disadvantage. Many wonder why Madrid is persisting instead of pulling out for the same reasons as Rome did. Will Spain really be in shape financially to take on the burden and risks of such an event in the near future? Tokyo has therefore been seen by some as the ‘safe bet’, but now some wonder if the continuing horror reports in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima soon three years ago might not scare some voters off.

You may wonder how much of a role the technical selection criteria will play in the end. There is an Evaluation Commission assessing each city on the basis of a large number of factors, for instance overall vision, competition venues, Olympic village, transport, environment, finances, safety and security, political and public support and several others. The answer tends to be that nobody can clearly figure out how the written report should be interpreted in terms of weighing together all this factors in an objective manner, when it comes down to the final two or three candidates. It is much more likely that political considerations and subjective judgment will play a role. This time there may also be a link to the election of new IOC President. Could realistically the same continent get the nod twice, will there be some ‘horse trading’ as between the two decision-making processes etc?

It might seem easier to speculate about which one of the three sports (squash, wrestling or baseball/softball) that gets in. Or, in the case of wrestling, stays in. Wrestling seemed to be subjected to some kind of coercion: you will be out unless you clean up your act! But that galvanized strong forces to come to the rescue, including such strange political constellations as USA-Iran-Russia. Chances are that wrestling may have atoned sufficiently. Squash is more and more a true world sport and many would give it a chance, but they may have to wait. Baseball/softball also tries to project itself as more of a global sport than a purely American-based, but the many controversies related to professional baseball may turn out to be too big a handicap.

It may be that most observers see the choice of host city as the most exciting one on the agenda, but for me personally it may be more intriguing to see who gets the chance to become the next IOC President. As some people put it, the bidding host cities get a chance every four years, while the mandate period for the President is eight years with an opportunity for a four-year extension. So the election for the Presidency just may be more important for the world of sport. Of course, some cynics argue that these days the IOC is a glamorous but rather toothless organization, where the role is essentially limited to running the Olympic Games. This makes it a financial and political behemoth, but does it really have much influence over the evolution of individual sports and the sports movement across the globe.

Well, in one sense the IOC can be seen as an umbrella organization for the matrix of International Sports Federations (IFs) such as FIFA, FIBA, IHF etc, and the National Olympic Committees (NOCs). But the reality is in fact that the IOC out of its own volition is really acting rather ‘hands off’ in relation to these many organizations. For instance, many IFs are frequently accused of corruption, bad governance or at least incompetence. But the IOC simply says that the stakeholders within the respective sports must be the ones to clean up their own act. The IOC is more likely to intervene if the politicians in a country try to get involved in running the national Olympic affairs. Then the IOC gets all uptight about the importance of the autonomy of the sports movement. But when in certain countries the Sheikhs, Emirs and Princes de facto run the entire complex of sports organizations and furthermore serve as IOC members, then the IOC does not seem to want to raise a stink.

Apropos Sheikhs, many seem to think the ‘puppet master’ in all the IOC elections is a certain Sheikh, namely Sheikh Ahmad of Kuwait, head of the Olympic movement in Asia and also the powerful chairman of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC). Handball fans will also remember him as an apparent manipulator behind the scenes in the fraudulent Olympic qualifying match Kuwait-Korea some years ago. As I wrote in a recent posting, he has been seen as the crucial supporter behind the frontrunner candidate Thomas Bach of Germany. Whether this support will last until the finish line and whether it will be enough remains to be seen. In recent time, Ser Miang Ng of Singapore seems to be the main challenger, but Puerto Rican Richard Carrion also seems to have considerable support. The other three candidates, Denis Oswald of Switzerland, Ching-Kuo Wu of Taiwan and Sergei Bubka of Russia appear less likely to succeed, unless perhaps President Putin takes over the role of ‘king maker’.

But you can rest assured that all the candidates are insiders from the Olympic movement. If you read their manifestos, you could almost suspect that they have the same agent. They all have very similar ideas in terms of priorities for the IOC and their respective strengths that would make them the best person for the job. They have the experience and the political skills. Whether any one of them could turn out to be a rejuvenator or a person ensuring that ethics and integrity will become more important than money and influence, that remains to be seen. Among the top contenders, there may be small issues and margins making the difference in the end. But while Bach shows signs of becoming less confident and more inclined to ‘play defense’; I think he is still the one to beat.

Now, if you want to go beyond this rather superficial overview, both now and after the decisions have been taken, then I have a really good recommendation for you. The foremost expert on these issues is the German investigative journalist, Jens Weinreich, whose name I have mentioned to you before. At this moment he is already in Buenos Aires, with better access than most other media representatives on account of his ‘seniority’ among IOC followers and also due to his really solid knowledge of the issues and the people involved. You really should follow his blog and buy his emerging E-book. Again: jensweinreich.de