IOC President Opening Oceania Tour in Australia

(ATR) After a meeting in India, IOC president Thomas Bachvisits Australia and other Oceania nations this week.

Bidding will be on the agenda when Bach touches down in Australia on Wednesday. Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates recently announced that the committee would back a joint 2028 bid being considered

by the Queensland cities of Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Coates, who is also an IOC vice president, will take Bach to the nation’s capital Canberra where they will meet with Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

They will then head to Sydney where a visit to the city’s Olympic Park will allow Bach to see the legacy the 2000 Olympic Games has left on the city.

Bach and Coates will then travel to Fiji where they will attend the Oceania National Olympic Committees General Assembly, followed by a trip to Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu that was recently devastated by a tropical cyclone.

The visit to Vanuatu will be the first by an IOC president since 1987, and Bach will see the damage that the cyclone has done to the small island nation’s sporting infrastructure.

The IOC and Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) made a donation of $500,000 with the money intended to help rebuild the nation through sport.

Bach is nearing the end of a long journey which has seen him travel throughoutEurope, the United States and most recently India, championing theimportance of sport in society and its ability to spread peace.

He met India’s Prime MinisterNarendra Modi earlier today in New Delhi, where India confirmed that it will not bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Written by Alice Wheeler

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