IOC Executive Board ready to meet in Greece for the first time in 17 years

Greece will become a crossroads for the Olympic Movement in October with a series of meetings and ceremonies.

The IOC Executive Board will gather in Athens October 15 for an in-person meeting. It will mark the first time the EB has met in Greece since 2004. It will also be just the second in-person meeting to be held since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Executive Board did get together face-to-face in Tokyo in July just ahead of the start of the Olympics.

The next day the EB will travel to Olympia to mark the 100th anniversary of the group, the ruling body of the IOC. Now numbering 15, the EB was one-third that size when it first met in Lausanne in 1921.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was president. The rest of the EB included Sigfrid Edström from Sweden, Jiří Guth-Jarkovský from Czechoslovakia, Godefroy de Blonay of Switzerland, Melchior, Marquis de Polignac from France and Henri, Count de Baillet-Latour from Belgium.

The IOC EB will be on hand in Olympia to mark the inauguration of a $12 million renovation of the International Olympic Academy (IOA). The work has been carried out during the past two years, ranging from new water and sewage systems to the accommodations and restaurant.

Planned for October 18 is the ceremonial lighting of the Olympic flame for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The lighting traditionally takes place at the Ancient Olympia site, across the road from the IOA.

Just six days later, leaders of the world’s National Olympic Committees will be arriving in Greece for the first in person meeting of the Association of National Olympic Committees since 2019. The ANOC meeting will take place on the island of Crete, 300 kilometers from Athens, October 24 to 25.

Hellenic Olympic Committee President and IOC member Spyros Capralos says the schedule will be finalized in the coming week.