A shockwave of epic proportions boomed out Thursday across the Olympic world.
The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, opted to take on – with the obvious goal of taking out – Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, the kingmaker once and perhaps again.
The obvious question: why? The follow-on: will Bach succeed? The IOC president is nothing if not intelligent and calculated. Then again, so is the sheikh.
The levels of political intrigue here are complex. The end game put in play Thursday is the 2025 IOC presidential election, at which by rule Bach is due to step down.
Seemingly a lifetime ago: Thomas Bach and Sheikh Ahmad share the dais in 2017 // Getty Images
Let’s be clear: the stakes here are as high as it gets. This involves not just sports politics but connections to and the reach of governments, issues of travel, rights of association and more. And, ultimately, what authority the IOC has, and does not.
Bach has just under two years to go in his term. The response Thursday in some not insignificant number of Olympic precincts to what went down in Lausanne was not just concern but consternation. In southern Ohio, where I grew up, what the IOC did might well have been described as deer hunting with helicopters – maybe, you know, a complete and over-the-top overreaction to a situation.
Or was it?
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Sheikh Ahmad – hereafter, the sheikh – played a, if not the, key role in getting Bach elected IOC president in 2013.
The sheikh, an IOC member since the early 1990s, has long been a dominant figure in Olympic, especially Asian, sports politics. For 30 years, 1991-2021, he was president of the Olympic Council of Asia. Since June, he is Kuwait’s deputy prime minister and defense minister. That gives him, anew, diplomatic immunity.
Perhaps five years into Bach’s term, for reasons unclear, a split emerged. The sheikh was charged, and ultimately convicted, in a Geneva courtroom in a convoluted forgery case; he was not a government minister then; to reiterate, he is again now. The case is on appeal. The sheikh maintains his innocence.
The sheikh self-suspended himself from various sports roles.
Earlier this month, the OCA elected the sheikh’s younger brother, Sheikh Talal, to the OCA presidency. Sheikh Talal defeated Husain al-Musallam, who is also Kuwaiti and for years had been the OCA director general; he is also now president of World Aquatics, formerly called FINA. The sheiks are Kuwaiti royalty; al-Musallam is not.
The sheikh – Sheikh Ahmad – flew to Bangkok before the vote. As a Kuwaiti government minister, he has every right to fly – to be – wherever he wants in our world.
The IOC sent him a note saying, don’t interfere in the vote. He stayed in his hotel room.
Sheikh Talal won, 24-20. The IOC suspected ‘irregularities.’ To that point, this query: what active role did the IOC play, if any, in lobbying beforehand in this election? What would the evidence show?
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On Thursday, the IOC sought to bring the hammer.
In a six-page explanation, its Ethics Commission laid out its case against the sheikh.
The sheikh said travel to Bangkok doesn’t necessarily mean he influenced anything. That’s true. Proving otherwise? Impossible.
The key is the “analysis” that follows. Any inference that could be drawn one way or another is drawn against the sheikh. One might ask why.
For instance:
Responding to questions in the Kuwaiti Parliament on July 11, the sheikh “seems not to deny” the use of “public means” and “appears to use his involvement in the OCA to justify such use.”
Seems?
Even by a “more probable than not” standard, “seems” is a stretch, ladies and gentlemen of the ethics jury.
The evidence for this sweeping assertion? This quote from the sheikh in Parliament: “I am personally the President of the Council of Asia. This is my second hat.”
This, it is worth noting, is translated from the Arabic, per the ethics commission. Who did the translation? Is it translation notarized? Are the verb tenses in the two languages the same?
The sheikh was president for 30 years. Indeed, it was – was – his second hat. Was he speaking – anyone who knows the sheikh knows his spoken language, at least in English, can be imprecise – casually or formally?
From this, the ethics panel draws this conclusion: it “demonstrate[s] not only his interferences in the OCA’s activities but also that he had no intention of respecting” the IOC’s warnings.
More: the sheikh “actively intervened” in the OCA election, as also “corroborated by the various pieces of evidence.” What evidence?
The IOC executive board suspended the sheikh for three years.
This, too:
“Additionally, it is recommended, as a consequence of this sanction of suspension, that the Olympic Parties, including the IOC Members, shall refrain from interacting with Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah, in particular to avoid any risk of perception of influence on any decisions regarding the Olympic Movement.”
So now the IOC is not only going to sanction the sheikh but telling anyone and everyone not to interact with the sheikh as well. On the basis of “perception”?
We just had a police raid on the offices of Paris 2024. Is the IOC telling anyone not to interact with senior officials there on the basis of “perception” regarding the Olympic movement? Why not?
Isn’t the OCA an independent – if affiliated – organization? Who is the IOC to tell anyone at an independent organization what they can and cannot do?
Further, the IOC opted – it’s always follow-the-money, right? – to distribute Olympic Solidarity funds directly to the Asian NOCs “until the OCA’s elections have been recognized by the IOC.” This is about as blunt as it gets.
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What's going on here?
Look at it first from the IOC’s perspective:
Their view is that they warned the guy and warned the guy and warned the guy. Still, he showed up in Bangkok. His brother – from their position just a front for the sheikh – wins. How could the sheikh not have influenced this thing?
What are they supposed to do?
This sort of frontal challenge to IOC – to Bach’s – authority cannot stand. Right?
Moreover, the IOC must be very confident it can, it will, prevail against all challenge.
But.
Even if it prevails, will it have won?
This is the bottom line.
Again, from the viewpoint of Olympic House in Lausanne, the point is to take the sheikh out – in every way possible – from influencing the 2025 presidential election.
Also, it’s elemental that because this was not negotiated to mutual resolution – that this has now proceeded to an ethics committee recommendation and EB ratification, essentially Defcon 5 against the sheikh – that Bach had to have set all this in motion and thus believed a negotiated settlement would have left the sheikh in a position of considerable strength looking out toward the near future and, presumably, 2025.
This, though, is where things get mighty complicated.
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Everyone in the Olympic scene knows there are essentially four, perhaps five, names being tossed about for 2025. In no particular order: Sebastian Coe of Great Britain, Morinari Watanabe of Japan, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe and, maybe, Neven Ilic of Chile.
One of the overriding questions for 2025 is whether Bach really will step down, as the rules say he must.
If he does not, that would go against everything – everything – he has said as a reformer, the architect of Agenda 2020 and 2020+5. He knows this.
Persistent chatter has him backing Coventry and then serving her as some sort of “senior advisor.” A rejoinder to that chatter is that she can no way win, for a variety of reasons. (Not endorsing any viewpoint. Just repeating the chatter.) Bach, meantime, has told any number of people that the next president cannot be 1/ male, 2/ from Europe and 3/ of his vintage. You can see who that would leave. There’s only one woman in that list.
The way to win an IOC presidential election is to control the votes of each of the five continents.
The sheikh has long controlled Asia.
The IOC wants to re-do the OCA election with the idea of getting al-Musallam in as OCA president. Their thinking: he would then control Asia. Uh, maybe.
Recall that it is widely presumed to be al-Musallam’s idea to get the Russians qualified for Paris 2024 through Asia – and where, by the way, does that idea stand now with Sheikh Talal in charge? Hello?
If al-Musallam is not in charge of the OCA, then whatever plan/s Bach might have for 2025 would have to be, let’s say, re-assessed, and vigorously. Would the sheikh be inclined to go along with whatever Bach has in mind? Commence ha-ha-ha now.
Just as an aside: does anyone seriously believe for even a nanosecond that a suspended sheikh can’t find whatever workarounds he might want? Rainwater always finds its way to the river. Please.
The sheikh and al-Musallam have known each other for decades. Their relationship has deteriorated significantly, to the point that observers have said they can hardly be in the same room with each other.
One would have to assume, especially in light of Thursday’s IOC action, that the sheikh would know a lot about what al-Musallam may or may not have done over the years. So – what’s next?
Perhaps the same can be said the other way around – that al-Musallam knows a lot about the sheikh. But keep in mind: the sheikh is royalty. And at the end of the day, al-Musallam is a citizen of Kuwait. And he is not royalty.
The sheikh is not only royalty, he is deputy prime minister and defense minister. Does Bach know something about something in Switzerland to be so confident? That rejection of the sheikh’s appeal will lead to him being kicked off the IOC entirely? Pause for a moment. From the IOC’s perspective, that might solve a short-term problem. Long-term: Really? The sheikh has a lot of supporters in a lot of places. Again with the rainwater … it cannot be stopped.
Meantime, why – why – would a sports organization devoted to peace-building thrust itself into an ‘ethics’ matter involving a senior government official from a sovereign state? When the IOC needs the support of governments to function?
Lest anyone forget, the IOC a few weeks ago banished the IBA, the boxing federation, because it is led by a Russian president, Umar Kremlev, believed by the IOC to have strong ties to the Russian president himself. Now the IOC has made two aggressive moves, and the end game in 2025 is – what?
If anyone thinks the sheikh is going to go quietly into the night, think again. This, ladies and gentlemen, is hardball. As hard and tough and real as it gets.