Olympic champion in team foil at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, the 66-year-old lawyer will seek his re-election for four years at the 137th IOC session, scheduled in Athens from March 10 to 12, 2021. This will necessarily be his last term, according to the IOC Statutes: the head of the Olympic body is elected for eight years by the 104 members of the organization, by secret ballot, but can only be reappointed once for a period reduced by half.
Sometimes criticized internally for his management deemed authoritarian, Thomas Bach has hardly encountered any declared opposition since 2013, with the exception of the Canadian lawyer Dick Pound, a veteran of the body in which he has served since 1978. The end of his last mandate was especially agitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the IOC to postpone its Olympic high mass to the end of March for the first time in peacetime.
The Tokyo Olympics, initially scheduled for the summer of 2020 and supposed to symbolize the reconstruction of the country after the 2011 tsunami, have been postponed to 2021 and their organization remains a financial and health puzzle.
Ninth IOC President, Thomas Bach had embarked on sports policy by becoming spokesperson for the athletes of West Germany to be able to compete in the Moscow Games in 1980, finally boycotted by his country to protest against the intervention USSR military in Afghanistan, in December 1979. After graduating from the bar, he notably defended the interests of Adidas and worked alongside his former boss Horst Dassler, a major and controversial player in international sport for his role in the bankruptcy of his ISL sports marketing company.
Entered the IOC in 1991, elected Vice-President in 2000, Thomas Bach needed two rounds of voting in 2013 to succeed Belgian Jacques Rogge during a session in Buenos Aires, facing five rivals, including the Ukrainian legend of the pole vault Sergei Bubka.
For their re-election, the IOC presidents benefit from the system of co-opting the members of the body: around half (55) of the voters of the future president have joined the organization since 2014, under his aegis.
Among the contenders often cited for his succession is the Englishman Sebastian Coe, double Olympic champion in the 1500m (1980 and 1984), boss of the London 2012 Olympic Games organizing committee and president of the international athletics federation, who entered at the IOC during the 136th session last July.
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