COSTA NAVARINO, Greece – Before Thursday’s vote here for the next president of the International Olympic Committee, it’s worth taking a moment to think about what might have been.
And how one of the most shocking deaths in the Olympic scene reverberates, still – with a warning for what is to come in arguably the most consequential IOC presidential election, ever.
It was the summer of 2018, and on the outdoor patio of the Royal Savoy hotel in Lausanne, Patrick Baumann and a few others were enjoying cigars and libations.
Baumann, who was personable, capable and efficient, was not only the secretary general of the basketball federation FIBA but also the head of the umbrella organization GAISF and a leader in the emerging field of esports — for which he was mentioned at Wednesday’s IOC assembly.
That night, everything seemed possible – including the distinct shot, assuredly being discussed, of a Baumann 2025 run for the IOC presidency. As a Swiss national, he already enjoyed considerable goodwill.
Three months later, he was gone – dead of a heart attack at the Buenos Aires Youth Games.
Our world moves in mysterious ways.
No one can ever know whether Baumann would have run, now, for the IOC presidency.
Or how he would stack up against the — seven — candidates in this 2025 race. Seb Coe, Kirsty Coventry or Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. are widely considered most likely to win. Juan Antonio Samaranch, the father, served as IOC president from 1980 to 2001.
What can be said with certainty:
The world is ever-changing. GAISF, for instance, is no more.
It’s not often that any entity confronting the sort of abrupt trauma with which FIBA was presented can respond as it has done. Baumann’s successor, Andreas Zagklis, is a first-rate executive. The Paris basketball tournament will long be remembered for Stephen Curry’s heroics in the men’s final.
For its part, the IOC has suffered for the loss of Baumann and, among others, François Carrard, its longtime former director general.
Patrick Baumann at the 2017 IOC session in Peru // Getty Images
Both were, to use a word, polymaths – someone of wide knowledge and learning. The IOC needs more such individuals.
And of the high-class way each – both – conducted themselves.
Instead, and for emphasis, these next remarks are not aimed at any of the seven candidates in the race: this presidential campaign – the IOC indisputably grappling over the Bach years with an institutional erosion of trust — has brought a swirl of allegations of misconduct, some anonymized, some not and, it is said, a behind-the-scenes hard-pressure campaign that would appear to be aimed at promoting one of the candidates.
It's not difficult to figure out who might be doing the pressuring, on whose behalf, and why – on the assumption that legacies are perhaps at issue and certain candidates are thought more likely than, say, one, to find a reason to challenge the status quo.
Bach, speaking Wednesday afternoon to the roughly 100 gathered members at the assembly, sought to defend his work, in particular the would-be reforms passed in 2014, a program called “Agenda 2020”:
“To be or not to be. In the world of business, one would say change or perish. For us in the Olympic movement, the question was, and is, change or be changed.”
Everything since, he said, ought to be seen through a “lens of change and togetherness.”
IOC president Thomas Bach, right, with director general Christophe de Kepper, at Wednesday’s session // IOC YouTube channel
History will be the judge: how much change, really, did Agenda 2020 effect?
Thus the key election question: how much continuity do the members want?
Or do they want – do they recognize the IOC needs – real change?
Starting with a return of the members’ power. Put another way, their agency – which during the Bach years, marked by centralized control from Olympic House in Lausanne, has all but disappeared.
Ban Ki-Moon, the former United Nations secretary general and chair for the past eight years of the IOC Ethics Commission, said Wednesday at the assembly that Agenda 2020 enhanced IOC credibility, referring both to the “integrity” of sports organizations within the movement and sports competitions themselves.
How, then, to reconcile the controversy sparked by the women’s boxing tournament at the Paris Games – where two athletes the IOC had been told had tested for XY markers and ‘male’ karyotypes were nonetheless allowed to compete in the female category? Both won gold medals.
In interviews before this assembly, Bach called the controversy “based on a fake news campaign coming from Russia.”
He also said, “These two female focuses were born as women, they were raised as women, they have been competing as women, they have been winning and losing as every other person.”
Born as women? What do the lab tests say?
“The moment we take integrity for granted, we lose everything sports stands for,” Moon said Wednesday from the dais.
Is it any wonder the IOC – like other institutions – is confronting a trust problem?
Leading into talk, talk, talk of a pre-election pressure campaign?
For public consumption, when it comes to the notion of pressure, there are, of course, the appropriate disclaimers.
“I think it’s still a fair competition,” one of the seven, David Lappartient, said here Wednesday.
In a separate gaggle with reporters, Coventry was asked straight up, “So the process has been above board, as you’ve seen in general?”
Her answer: “Yes.”
Off the record, some members have suggested a different experience.
The question: will the vote be fair?
Not just the balloting. But the final hours leading up to the voting and the crucial moments immediately before.
Longtime observers will remember the presidential vote in 2001 in Moscow, at which Jacques Rogge was elected. The outgoing president, Samaranch Senior, all but threw one of the other candidates, Kim Un Yong, under the bus in comments immediately preceding the voting itself.
On Thursday, the IOC cannot lend itself to any such nonsense.
The IOC must ensure this plays out with as much fairness — purportedly a key Olympic value — as possible.
It’s something Baumann would have understood. Carrard, too.
François Carrard in 2016 // Getty Images
As Bach observed three years ago when Carrard passed, after illness, at 83, Carrard was “not only a man of law and sport but also a great man of culture.”
When Baumann died, Bach said, “We lose a young and sympathetic leader full of hope who was standing for the future of sport.”
If only.
And we can all – we must – hope.
Because nothing less than the future of sport is what this election is about.