Out of the dustiness of Olympic politics came a pair of related thoughts this week. They both went to the subject of blood – the blood of a female boxer punched to tears and the bloodline of a fella who stood back and let it happen.
The overlap of those themes jumped out at a few of us in Lausanne on Thursday, when the various cardinals of the International Olympic Committee got together at their headquarters.
You see, this was the day when the seven candidates for president stood up and told 110 members why their brand of aspirational messaging warrants a vote in March. We could easily get bogged down in the runners and riders here, not to mention the clandestine machinations, but there were only two individuals who caught my attention.
Naturally enough, one was Sebastian Coe, who hands down has the best credentials in the battle to land the most powerful job in global sport. Best by a street, actually. As for the other, that was the 65-year-old nepo baby who is expected to beat him.
And that’s where we get to the blood, because we all know Juan Antonio Samaranch’s dad – he hogged the presidency from 1980 to 2001 and, in these parts, old blood will always get a head start.
That would be an iffy look, sure. A stinker. But it’s also only one part of the blood issue around Samaranch, and it’s the other that’s the worst element.
Sebastian Coe, left, has the best credentials to become the IOC’s new president in seven weeks, whereas Juan Antonio Samaranch, right, was flimsy when action was needed
Samaranch has a head start with his father, right, having led the IOC from 1980 to 2001
Angela Carini broke down in tears 46 seconds into her bout against Imane Khelif (right)
We are talking here about the bloodied chin and shorts of Angela Carini, who you’ll recall was the Italian welterweight sent into a boxing ring in Paris last summer and bashed around by an Algerian athlete. That being Imane Khelif, who a year earlier had been disqualified from the world championships for failing gender eligibility tests.
Carini’s Olympic dream lasted 46 seconds before she broke down in tears, saying Khelif beat her harder than she had ever been hit before. Khelif went on to win gold, and so too did a second boxer, the Taiwanese featherweight Lin Yu-ting, who was disqualified from the 2023 worlds for the same reason.
I won’t take shots at the Khelif and Lin here, because it’s not about them this far down the line. But it is about the spineless elements of the IOC who permitted such a dangerous farce and generated one of the worst stinks in the history of the Olympics.
There are a couple of reasons for digging into this now, and that’s primarily because Samaranch was on the IOC’s all-powerful executive committee which let it happen. Alongside him was another prominent candidate in this election, Kirsty Coventry, who is the preferred choice of the outgoing president, Thomas Bach.
The relevance is that they have each now flown a windsock and realised they had a bit of a balls-up there – both are making a campaign point of the imperative to protect the female category in sport. Good for them, but they might be a bit late with that one. Warriors on the ballot; flimsy as hell when action was needed and they had an opportunity to help.
Now this is all a roundabout way of getting to Coe, because where Samaranch and Coventry say they will take a stance on big issues, he already has. Protecting the female category against athletes with differences of sexual development? Gender politics? He’s been on that frontier for years.
It’s not a manifesto pledge, a notional possibility; it is a reality he has been implementing at World Athletics since the Caster Semenya affair. If leadership requires a willingness to get dirty, he is just about the only figure in the Olympic sector, certainly among big sports, who stepped up.
Ditto when he was the only federation head who got tough on Russia for doping and then rolled the end of that ban into a new one for the Ukrainian invasion. At a point when Bach was all too willing to kiss Vladimir Putin’s backside, Coe kicked the Russians out of athletics.
Kirsty Coventry, right, is the preferred choice of the outgoing IOC president, Thomas Bach
Coe was the only federation head who got tough on Russia and kicked them out of athletics
To go through all of Coe’s earliers is an exhaustive task – he has ticked all the boxes needed
It is perhaps no surprise that Coe has positioned himself as the reform candidate and, indeed, why the status quo might not be so enamoured with the inferences. Equally, it is openly known that Bach would sooner stab one of his fencing foils deep into his own foot than see Coe elected into a position to rework his empire.
But these are critical times for the Olympics, which I would contend remain the greatest show on earth, and yet they are suffering an identity crisis. What are the Olympics meant to be in the modern world? The 100m sprint and old classics? Or a spot of breakdancing? They don’t seem to know what they are, or who they are trying to reach, and sponsors have picked up on the lack of confidence.
The need for changes have become great and it is less likely to be achieved by two ditherers who made such a mess of the summer.
Can it be Coe, the last strand of the three main contenders? That depends on his ability to charm an eclectic, stifled membership drawn from heads of state, royals, CEOs of multinationals and Gianni Infantino, among others. But on the power of CVs, his is without match in this discussion.
It brings a reminder of a gathering he arranged for a small group of journalists in December, when he chose a 21st-floor office in east London for the meeting. The venue was picked with one purpose in mind – it overlooked the entire 500-acre site of London 2012, the Games he delivered to the capital, and he was less than hesitant in pointing it out. From memory, I believe he said: ‘Here’s one I made earlier.’
To go through all of Coe’s earliers is an exhaustive task – from track to parliament to the lords to the boardroom, he has ticked the boxes needed for the post.
It would be a colossal act of self-sabotage, and entirely in step with Coe’s criticisms of the old place, if the silly buggers failed to realise that when they vote in seven weeks’ time.
