Late Wednesday night time, members of the Worldwide Olympic Committee gathered for a dinner on the Olympic Museum on the banks of Lake Geneva. The following morning, they might see displays from seven candidates vying to be their chief, a job that might by most measures be a very powerful in worldwide sports activities.
On the closed-doors gathering, the outgoing president, Thomas Bach, ensured that the members current — the individuals who decide who will ultimately lead the I.O.C. — had been saved aside from the candidates. It was, he mentioned maybe jokingly, so they might get pleasure from their meals in peace.
It was a scene consistent with the quirky and generally stifling guidelines of an election that will probably be determined after I.O.C. members vote in March at a resort in southern Greece.
The winner will assume management of the group that controls the Olympics, an occasion that’s as prestigious as it’s costly, and a diplomatic standing greater than every other determine within the sports activities world. However lots of the candidates have been crucial of the thicket of guidelines and laws surrounding the election that they are saying have hindered their potential to get their message throughout not solely to I.O.C. members but in addition the broader world.
Candidates are barred from holding debates, voicing opposition concerning a rival’s imaginative and prescient for the I.O.C. and even receiving public endorsements from members.
“What we’re taking a look at as candidates is to develop into the president of the biggest sports activities motion on this planet, and I feel, in equity, transparency and integrity, the world has a proper to know who’s operating and what they stand for,” Prince Faisal bin Al Hussein, one of many candidates, mentioned, in a strikingly direct assertion within the protocol heavy world of the 130-year-old group.
The establishment attracts its members from the world of sports activities and past, with federation heads rubbing shoulders with leaders from commerce, politics, present enterprise and — like within the case of Prince Faisal — world royalty. Princess Anne, the youthful sister of England’s King Charles III, heads the nominations committee for what has been described as essentially the most unique membership on this planet. (There are at present 110 members.)
Prince Faisal is the one bona fide royal among the many seven candidates vying for the presidency. However he’s joined by what counts as I.O.C. aristocracy within the type of the Spanish businessman Juan Antonio Samaranch, whose father led the group for twenty years by means of 2001 and formed a lot of what it has develop into. Additionally operating are 4 leaders of sports activities federations, together with Sebastian Coe, the gold medal-winning Olympic runner-turned-head of worldwide monitor and subject. And for the primary time there’s a feminine candidate: Kirsty Coventry, an Olympic champion swimmer from Zimbabwe, who would even be the primary particular person from Africa to steer the I.O.C.
For such a consequential election, a lot of it’s happening at midnight, away from any type of public (or personal) debate.
The morning after the dinner on the museum, the candidates — all staying on the luxurious Lausanne Palace, the longtime hang-out of the I.O.C., which has a collection named for the elder Samaranch — had been taken in black Mercedes minivans to the group’s headquarters at intervals corresponding with the order wherein they had been to ship 15-minute displays. It was the primary and solely alternative for them to talk to your complete membership. Officers needed to hand over their cellphones, recordings weren’t permitted and members weren’t allowed to ask questions.
The scene and the secrecy prompted a couple of official to fume on the course of being extra akin to a papal conclave, when the number of a brand new pope after a secret vote by a gathering of cardinals is confirmed with white smoke emanating from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.
After presenting his imaginative and prescient to the members who, just like the Catholic cardinals, will vote in secret, Mr. Samaranch mentioned in an interview that he would have liked to have had a recording of his speech. In spite of everything, he mentioned, it was “the speech of my life.”
Nonetheless, sitting in a room bearing not solely his father’s title but in addition a big portrait of him, Mr. Samaranch, a member of the I.O.C.’s high board since 2012, mentioned he had not taken the time to problem the principles of the election, most of which, he mentioned, he disagreed with.
Beneath the laws, contact time with voters is severely restricted. In-person conferences, past the 2 days in Lausanne, are tightly managed, with strict necessities to present superior discover of any such contact to the I.O.C.’s ethics physique. Telephone calls are allowed.
“Nonsense,” mentioned Morinari Watanabe, an long-shot candidate from Japan who leads world gymnastics, because the members had been chauffeured away after the displays. The following time they’ll all be collectively is on the eve of the vote.
Mr. Watanabe’s concepts embody turning the Olympic Video games right into a 24-hour enterprise throughout 5 continents and renaming the I.O.C. These are revolutionary ideas for a corporation whose strategy to alter will be glacial in contrast with the company world.
“The Olympic motion is a strong motion,” mentioned Mr. Coe, simply essentially the most recognizable of the candidates past the clubby world of sports activities politics. “It must be the thought management in sport, it must be setting the tone and magnificence, and, my goodness, there may be nothing just like the Olympic Video games.”
The winner will management a corporation that generates virtually $8 billion per four-year Olympic cycle. However maybe extra vital, the position is taken into account the highest diplomat in sports activities, a bridge in an more and more fractious world, with a prize within the Summer season Olympics for which nice powers vie. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s chief, was the primary to name Thomas Bach after his election in 2013.
Most members refused to supply any perception into whom they had been pondering of voting for, and even primary questions on what traits they wish to see in a candidate. Luis Mejia Oviedo, a delegate from the Dominican Republic, sitting within the oak-trimmed foyer of the Lausanne Palace, solely smiled and supplied a handshake as a response to every of three questions concerning the election.
Syed Shahid Ali, a Pakistani who has been an I.O.C. member for nearly 30 years, mentioned debate throughout the motion had slowly eroded, giving members little say in essential choices. That has been a daily critique of the group beneath Mr. Bach, a former German fencer.
“The I.O.C. is an autonomous physique however fairly personal in a single sense,” Mr. Ali mentioned as he watched an attendant open a door for Prince Albert II of Monaco to enter a chauffeur-driven Lexus and make his departure. “It controls world sport, so from that sense it’s not all that non-public. However from the inside workings of the way it capabilities — that’s fairly personal.”
Most of the candidates, together with Mr. Samaranch and Ms. Coventry, are established members of the I.O.C.’s high board and have vowed to present members a larger voice once more. That features having a say within the group’s most vital alternative: the place the Olympics will happen. Beneath Mr. Bach, that alternative has largely been taken away, with the members evaluating only one most well-liked candidate put ahead by the I.O.C. management.
“They need to have mentioned it a lot earlier,” Mr. Ali mentioned. “It exhibits lack of braveness of convictions or the very fact it may be an afterthought or it may be that it’s solely relevant now you’re a candidate.”
With a largely inscrutable and various voters, forecasting front-runners is a difficult process. There was hypothesis that Ms. Coventry, who just lately turned a mom for the second time, has the backing of the incumbent Mr. Bach. “I feel he’s being very reasonable to all of us,” Ms. Coventry instructed a information convention capped at 10 minutes per candidate after their pitches. “I don’t really feel that he’s out campaigning for me.”
For the winner, there will probably be a bulging to-do listing, with a notable deal with the US, the place the most important tv contract requires updating after a decade; the nationwide antidoping company is within the midst of an more and more acrimonious conflict with the worldwide antidoping regulator; and the subsequent Summer season Olympics — in Los Angeles in 2028 — is being deliberate beneath a mercurial Trump administration.
“These are massive challenges, they’ll be in my in-tray if I’m profitable,” Mr. Coe mentioned.
With votes to be secured, candidates now face a race towards time to press their case. Mr. Samaranch hoped to collect just a few stragglers earlier than they left for his or her houses, companies and palaces around the globe. Smiling and making a lasso-like gesture, he hoped to collect as many as he might for dinner.
