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Thomas Bach will stand unopposed to serve a second time period as International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, the physique stated on Tuesday. Bach, a 66-year-old German lawyer, is ready to be confirmed for a four-year time period at an IOC session in March in Athens. Bach was initially elected for an eight-year time period as Olympic chief in September 2013, taking on from Belgian Jacques Rogge. If re-elected, Bach’s time period will finish in 2025, a yr after the Paris Olympics. The subsequent time period for the IOC presidency will begin after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which is able to now happen from July 23-Aug 8, 2021, having been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Bach, who gained gold for West Germany within the foil fencing workforce occasion on the 1976 Olympics, was elected an IOC member on the age of 37 and went on to play a sequence of influential roles inside the organisation, notably as a founding member of the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission, earlier than being elected its ninth president.
Under his reign as IOC chief, Bach has needed to grapple with a number of political challenges, and has notably overseen the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the 2016 Rio Summer Games, each perceived as essentially the most troublesome in recent times.
He has additionally been a key participant within the ongoing Russian doping saga, though the IOC got here in for criticism from some quarters for not issuing Moscow with a blanket ban over its state-sponsored doping system.
Bach additionally got here underneath fireplace for reinstating the Russian National Olympic Committee after the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics regardless of failed medicine assessments there.
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He is credited, nevertheless, with having put in place the Olympic Agenda 2020, that includes reforms aimed toward chopping prices and streamlining bidding processes to raised appeal to potential host cities.
The IOC, nevertheless, is arguably going through its greatest problem in Bach’s tenure within the type of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the rescheduling of the Tokyo Games which means Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics simply six months later.
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