Six candidates vie to succeed Rogge at IOC

By Ignacio Naya Nov 2, 2011, 16:07 GMT

Guadalajara, Mexico - The president of the International Olympic Committee will only be chosen within 22 months, but the race to succeed Jacques Rogge is already heating up.

Thomas Bach, Richard Carrion, Nawal el-Moutawakel, Alexander Popov, Sergey Bubka and Ng Ser Miang are the ones being tipped for the job.

'It will be one of them,' Mario Vazquez Rana, the head of the Pan-American Sports Organization (ODEPA), recently told dpa.

The 79-year-old Mexican, who belongs to the IOC executive committee, says he knows who will be elected to the helm of the IOC at its general assembly in Buenos Aires in September 2013.

'The president of the Olympic Committee has been decided on,' Vazquez Rana said during the Pan-American Games in Guadalajara, where he hosted Rogge and other IOC members.

Vazquez Rana has been a close ally of the Belgian during his entire term in office, in the same way as he supported Rogge's predecessor, the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, during his more than two decades as IOC president.

Rogge, who will leave the post after 12 years, refuses to give his backing to any candidate, but nevertheless says he only sees 'four or five members who have the potential to be president.'

The current IOC president does not give names, but he knows that nothing is secret among the 113 members of the exclusive club he presides over.

'Let us wait. The candidates need to have been defined three months before the election (of the IOC president) in September 2013. But people at the IOC are not so naive as not to know beforehand who will run,' Rogge recently told dpa.

The six unofficial candidates all have strong assets.

Thomas Bach, a German, is a respected member of the IOC executive committee and president of its judicial commission. A few months ago, he was regarded as the favourite.

However, Puerto Rico's Richard Carrion is increasingly being talked about. As the head of the financial commission, he is responsible for the economic solvency of the IOC and for its multi-million-dollar income from selling Olympic Games transmission rights to media outlets.

However, Carrion comes from the banking world, and his 'non-sports' past could undermine his candidacy, as could also happen with Ser Miang.

On the other hand, the Singaporean IOC vice-president has a reputation for efficiency. The choice of Ser Miang would counter what Canadian Richard Pound - one of the most outspoken IOC members - calls 'European imperialism' within the committee.

Moroccan Nawal El Moutawakel would also do that. Not only would she be the first African, but also the first woman to head the IOC.

'I think she is a possible candidate. She's had some very good experience in the last few years, she comes from a part of the world that has never had an IOC president, she's an Olympic champion, she has a lot of things. She's smart,' Pound told dpa.

Former swimmer Alexander Popov comes from Russia, a country which has demonstrated its ability to play the political power game in the sports world. Russia will organize the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and the 2018 football world championships.

Ukrainian Sergey Bubka, who was very close to Samaranch, has been moving in powerful sports circles already for quite some time. The pole vault legend was tipped to succeed Lamine Diack as the head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Yet the Senegalese, who has been losing support in athletics circles, was re-elected unopposed in August, annoying those who had hedged their bets on the Ukrainian. Was there some calculation behind that move?

'Richard Carrion, Thomas Bach, Nawal el-Moutawakel and Sergey Bubka. Those are the four that are being talked about,' IOC member Francesco Ricci Bitti, who is also president of the International Tennis Federation, told dpa.

There will not be total clarity until 2013, but the race is expected to become more open from the 2012 London Olympics onwards.

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