From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, March nineteen, twenty twenty five. Israel is pounding Gaza again. Hundreds have reportedly died in air strikes, which Israel says are aimed at eliminating Hamas command structures and enforcing the return of hostages. You can read all our reporting and analysis of the latest twist in that conflict right now at the Australian dot com dot au. The International Olympic Committee is meeting to elect a new president
with a mandate to overhaul the Games. The candidates are united on one issue, trans women will be banned from female sporting categories. Today, our europe correspondent, Jacqueline Magne, who's covered fifteen Olympic Games, sizes up the candidates for world sports most powerful role and tells us why they're on
a unity ticket about women's sport. That's today's episode. Jacqueline Magnet is the Australian's Europe correspondent, and she's simultaneously covering the jostling for two incredibly important global positions, the papacy and the presidency of the IOC. Jack do you ever get these two things muddled up in your head and dream about Sebastian Cove becoming pope.
Well maybe Sebastian co might think that, but no, but the two organizations have very very similar structures in the way that they conduct their elections. So I suppose we've got a conclave happening this week in Greece on this resort Costa Navarino, which is usually a lovely summer resort. There's helipads everywhere, but it's empty at the moment except for one hundred and eight IOC members that have flown in, but also their families and the entourages in world sport.
They're all converging on this west coast of Greece. It's about a four and a half hour drive from Athens, and they're electing the new president to take over from Thomas Bark who's helmed the organization for twelve years now, and he steps down in June, but his success will be elected on Thursday evening.
Last time, most of our listeners paid attention to the International Olympic Committee members were being disgraced and kicked off the committee for accepting bribes all sorts of acts of corruption that was a couple of decades ago, around the time of the Sydney Olympics, less.
Than one hundred days.
The Olympic movement has faced its most serious challenge in the past one hundred years by a bribery scheme that had far reaching consequences for the International Olympic Committee at Salt Lake City won the bid on its merits, not because of this program.
We are aware that there are agents, and we are aware of the identities of at least some of them.
What they've done or not done, we don't know yet.
Apparently I said too much.
What is this organization? Now? Has it cleaned up its act?
Well?
It has because it had a very good president in Jacques Rogge, who implemented new rules that members couldn't go and to the bid cities anymore. And then we've had Thomas Bark for the last twelve years and he's really run it as a personal fifdom, you know, very autocratic.
His rule is the way to go. If people don't follow him or are not happy with what he suggests, people are very much shunned and pushed to the outer So he's created an interesting organization that's very closeted and the power is held within the executive and just a handful of IOC members, and so we've got this election. At the moment, there's seven candidates and nearly all of them are saying they want to open up the Olympic movement. They want to have allow members to have more of
a say. Some of them are even suggesting that they may go back to the time of having members able to visit bid cities and have more of an input into that decision because for the last decade they've felt very much on the outer.
What are the other big issues on the table?
Jack, Well, some of the big issues are what sports are going to be on the Olympic program and that will impact on Brisbane. Twenty thirty two.
The International Olympic Committee as the honor to announce that the Games of the thirty fifth Olympiad I award it to Brisbane, Australia.
Those will be made in the next year or so. We've seen just this week how boxing will be on the LA program. So boxing is an Olympic sport but was not on the LA program because of concerns about which organization will run World boxing. And so during the Paris Olympic Games, the IOC ran it and we had that huge controversy where we had two athletes who have failed previous six tests that were conducted by the International
Boxing Association. They were allowed to compete as females and they won gold medals.
The International Olympic Committee is playing defense. A day after an Algerian boxer deemed a biological male faced off against an Italian opponent who has hit so hard she stopped the fight.
Italian Angela Karini could take no more, feeling unfairly overpowered by Iman Khalif.
But for LA, the IOC doesn't want to conduct the boxing competition themselves. They want an international federation to conduct it, and so a rival boxing organization, World Boxing, has now been given the approval to host and control boxing for the Olympic Committee. And so it means that this rival boxing organization will now take over and run the competition.
Is breaking going to be back for the next It's a good credit.
No, I certainly don't think it does not have very big support amongst the IOC members at the moment. There's other sports, particularly cricket. I think they really want cricket to be a permanent sport on the Olympic program. But again it will depend on who the president is and what their particular quirks and favorites are. And one of the candidates is Juan Antonio Samarach who has been very
closely associated with modern pentathlon for about two decades. And if you recall the name Juan Antonio Sabarange where John saw everybody does, that's his father. So Samaranch Senior headed up the organization as president for twenty one years, including awarding the Games to Sydney, and then was the president during the time of the Sydney Olympics.
You have presented to the world the best Olympic Games ever.
Well it's his son now who is standing to be president again and following his father's footsteps.
Another issue that they're going to have to look at across the whole Olympic program is the question of transgender athletes competing at the Games. Until now, that's really been left to individual sporting federations to work out some rules for themselves. Of course, Donald Trump has said that no transgender athletes will be able to compete for the United States. So is this something that whoever the IOC president is going to have to resolve across the board.
This is such a hot topic and all of the IOC candidates have said that they will make the female competition for biological females only. Now, this was a stance that Sebastian Coe was very public about several years ago, and in his position as President of World Athletics, he was one of the first sports to have very clear
rules about the female category being for biological females. His camp is a little bit miffed really that all the other IOC candidates have now fallen in behind him and have adopted very similar policies because they've bred the room, They've gone and spoken to the members. Everybody has said, this issue is ridiculous. Why are we involved in this. We are not the United Nations. We are running sport and we have to protect sport for half of our constituency.
And so they've all swung in behind and whoever will be president next week will be implementing a kind of blanket directive about this and directing all the international sports giving them a clear and single policy in which to implement, so that all sport across the board will have a very similar policy where female sport will be for biological females.
Coming up. One of the candidates wants to rename the Games. And who else is in the running to run the IOC. That's after the break.
Seven candidates are vying to become the tenth President of the International Olympics Committee at the one hundred and forty third IOC session in Greece. They will be running to succeed seventy one year old German Thomas Buck, who has been at the helm of the IOC since October twenty thirteen.
Let's have look at some of the other front runners.
World record another gold medal.
Kirsty Coventry future Kirsty Coventry is a zimbabewin swimmer, very famous, one lot of medals. She then became a politician in Zimbabwe and she's been active in the IOC for a number of years. What sort of candidate is she.
Well, we know Kirsty quite well because she is the IOC's coordination chair for the Brisbane Olympics. So she's female, she's from Africa, and she's also a young mother. She has a four month old baby as well as a five year old. So Thomas Bark is very much pushing her candidate to the point where he's ringing other IOC members convincing them to try and swing behind Kirsty Coventry. So more of the same is what her presidency would be like. But then that holds her distinctly different to
all the other candidates. So it's whether the IOC membership wants what's been happening in the past decade or so to continue on or not.
There's a Jordanian prince and Japanese candidate. Tell us about some of the others.
Prince Vazo from Jordan, the royal family. He's very charming, very well liked, but he's considered very much a lightweight in the IOC. We've also got Mariani Wattanabi, who is the Japanese head of the International Gymnastics Federation, and he's actually thrown a lot of color into this election because he's got some really wild ideas. He wants the Olympics held on all five continents all at once, and suggesting
to change the name of the Olympics. He wants to call the Olympics the World Games, which is not that radical in terms of a name, but why are you going to get rid of your prize branding that's been built up over one hundred years and that's what all the sponsors are paying for that to be associated with the Olympics. So I don't think that one's going to fly. There's also Lord Sebastian Coe. Now he's got the best CV of all because he's world record holder, multiple Olympic champion.
It's Sebastian Path expending his lead and Sebastian past Sebastian cow wins the gold matter.
He headed up the London twenty twelve bid and then also the Olympic Games there and Chair of World Athletics and they've got two hundred members around the world, all the countries, so he's been able to go a network with all of these voting members for some time now, and I think he's the candidate with the momentum at the moment. I think a month ago, I would have said Juan Antonio Samarance Junior was the favorite because he is very well known, very charming, very friendly, and everybody
wants to tell him that they're voting for him. But I think that Sebastian Coe in the last month has really worked hard. Look, it's so hard to tell because it's a secret ballot and all the members say, oh, you can have my vote, but they never tell you in which round they're going to vote for you, so you know it is minde in secrecy and it's just fascinating to see if there's a block of votes then swinging behind another candidate.
Jacqueline Magnet is The Australian's europe correspondent. You can follow her coverage of the IOC election live on Thursday and Friday at the Australian dot com dot au