(ATR) Around the Rings is told that Sheikh Ahmad Al Sabah of Kuwait will be the new leader of the Association of National Olympic Committees.
Sources at a hush-hush meeting in Bangkok Sunday confirmed that the head of the Olympic Council of Asia is to be confirmed as ANOC's new president, replacing Mario Vazquez Rana who resigned in acrimony last week. He will lead the ANOC general assembly in Moscow next month.
ATR has learned that 14 of the 27 members of the ANOC Executive Council attended the meeting in the Thai capital, including Sheikh Ahmad and European Olympic Committees chief Patrick Hickey, who had led the campaign to oust Vazquez Rana. ANOC secretary general Gunilla Lindberg was also there.
An Ex-Co member said that more than 20 IOC members were present at this particular meeting and an Olympic Council of Asia meeting that convened in the same hotel to which ANOC members were initially invited.
"The meeting was very, very fruitful. Yes, this [Sheikh Ahmad's ANOC leadership] was the center of discussions," a source told ATR.
"Sheikh Ahmad will be the leader of ANOC for the future.
"We followed the decisions taken in Lausanne and in London in the last two meetings of the executive council," he added.
He said Ex-Co members were not surprised about the agenda for the meeting or its outcome given that Vazquez Rana had quit all IOC roles several days before.
With the election of the next IOC president and the 2020 Olympics host city in September 2013, Ex-Co members had been persuaded that the time was ripe for change and that Sheikh Ahmad was the man to take ANOC into a new era.
Ahmad and Hickey were joined by their continental counterparts – Lassana Palenfo of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa and Robin Mitchell of the Oceania National Olympic Committees – at the Bangkok meeting, which had been scheduled to discuss preparations for the Moscow assembly.
Under ANOC's constitution, nominations for the president of the association to serve a four-year term must be communicated to the members of the executive council prior to the election at the general assembly.
This explains the delay in any official release from ANOC about its change in leadership.
Reported by Mark Bisson
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