IOC Executive Board Meets to Help Shape Future of Olympics

(ATR) The IOC’s ruling body begins a three-day meeting in Montreux Wednesday that will finalize recommendations for an overhaul of the Olympic Movement.

The 15-member executive board convenes at a retreat in the Swiss resort Oct. 22 to 24 to review the work of 14 commissions who have each come up with solutions to address the challenges facing the Olympics under Thomas Bach’s Olympic Agenda 2020 mission.

The agenda and running order for the meeting have been shrouded in secrecy. Despite repeated requests to the IOC for details about the EB in Montreux, none have been forthcoming. The IOC has not confirmed whether there will be any other business discussed.

By way of comparison, FIFA publishes a detailed agenda for all its executive committee meetings days before Sepp Blatter meets with his colleagues.

The IOC EB’s brainstorming meeting is taking place behind closed doors. No media facilities are available. And no press conference is planned on site at the conclusion of the session, although Bach will hold a teleconference on Friday.

Bach told ATR last month that the summit in Montreux provided the best conditions for the IOC’s ruling body to debate Olympic Agenda 2020.

"It’s maybe a little bit nostalgic from my side that I wanted to have this spirit of Montreux where we really initiated discussion about Olympic Agenda 2020," he said. "I wanted to revive this when it comes to making the decisions about the procedure we started."

"This kind of retreat meeting is creating the best atmosphere so that we can discuss very openly."

What is known is that discussions this week will include a focus on revamping the Olympic bidding procedure, which could see visits to bid cities by IOC members reinstated, changes to the sports program, the costs of staging the Games, best-practice governance, a proposed Olympic TV channel, ethics issues and the structure of the IOC membership.

Over the next three days, EB members will finalize Olympic Agenda 2020 proposals that will be presented for approval at an IOC Extraordinary Session in Monaco Dec.8 and 9.

Craig Reedie, British IOC member and WADA president, highlighted the significance of this week’s meeting and the Session in December. "The Agenda 2020 process has been a very wide-ranging consultation effort by the IOC, driven by president Thomas Bach, and a comprehensive effort to modernise the institution," he told ATR.

"The Executive Board meetings in Montreux and the subsequent Session in Monaco will be faced with some of the most major decisions for many years across a whole range of IOC activities."

Swedish IOC ExCo member Gunilla Lindberg told ATR that the brainstorming summit and Monaco meeting represented a critical moment in the development of the Olympic Movement.

"Absolutely. It’s important," she said. "It started one year ago when we had the first meeting in Montreux and Olympic Agenda 2020 was created."

Since then, she pointed to the huge amount of input and contributions that came from the working groups, which comprised of stake Olympic stakeholders and the general public. "It was a very good proposal from the new IOC president. It’s a great opportunity to look at our organization and Olympic Games and to make changes for the future," she said.

IOC Working Groups and Chairs

1.Bidding procedure (John Coates);

2.Sustainability and legacy (Prince Albert of Monaco);

3.Differentiation of the Olympic Games (Sam Ramsamy);

4.Procedure for the Composition of the Olympic Program (Franco Carraro);

5. Olympic Games management (Mario Pescante);

6.Protecting clean athletes (Claudia Bokel)

7.Olympic TV channel (Thomas Bach)

8.Olympism in action including youth strategy (Gerardo Werthein)

9. Youth Olympic Games (Ser Miang Ng)

10.Culture policy (Lambis V. Nikolaou)

11.Good governance and autonomy (Craig Reedie)

12. Ethics (Youssoupha Ndiaye)

13. Strategic review of sponsorship, licensing and merchandising (Tsunekazu Takeda)

14. IOC Membership (Grand Duke of Luxembourg)

Reported by Mark Bisson

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.