Significant changes could be made to the Olympic Games bidding process after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board established a working group to define the next steps in reforming the candidature procedure.
IOC President, Thomas Bach, announced that the five-member panel, chaired by Australia’s John Coates, would be tasked with finding ways to improve the process for future Summer and Winter Olympic campaigns.
Bach claimed the IOC wanted to make the procedure “even more flexible, more targeted and more dialogue-oriented” in a bid to arrest the growing apathy cities appear to have towards bidding for the Games.
This could include the IOC approaching potential host cities it deems capable of staging the Games and encouraging them to bid.
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“The IOC may approach a city or a region and tell them, ‘Listen, isn’t it not a time for you now?” Bach said.
Bach claimed the working group, which also includes Slovakia’s IOC Athletes’ Commission vice-chair Danka Bartekova, Argentina’s Gerardo Werthein, Lydia Nsekera of Burundi and Li Lingwei of China, would be given a “blank cheque” to devise potential changes.
He added he was hopeful the group would be able to provide a report for the next Executive Board meeting on May 22, with a view to further discussions at the IOC Session in June.
Bach insisted, however, that the IOC would not move towards selecting its host cities, a model increasingly favoured by several sporting organisations in the Olympic Movement, including the International Associations of Athletics Federations.
“The Olympic Games are different – they are too big and too important that you could have an arrangement with a city without a public discussion and without anybody knowing except maybe the Executive Committee or Board of a Federation,” the IOC President said.