Marius Vizer: "I don't give up"

SOCHI, Russia — If you thought Marius Vizer, the president of SportAccord, was going to go gently into the Russian good night as the convention wound down here Thursday, you might also believe that Vladimir Putin paid for the 2014 Winter Games with $24 worth of, like, beads and matryoshka, those Russian stacking dolls. “I don’t give up,” Vizer said after an incredible news conference Thursday in which he asserted repeatedly that the attack he launched Monday on the International Olympic Committee system, with IOC president Thomas Bach right up front, was assuredly designed to be “constructive.”

Vizer is like rock legend Tom Petty. He does not back down.

On Thursday, asked about his motto, Vizer said, “My life for sport,” adding, “But I have seen in here this week a lot of people and a lot of decisions of people which the sport is for their life,” leaving no doubt in his mind that for them sport is a vehicle to buffet lines, big cars and other perks with little or no consideration for athletes.

He said, “I wish to work and collaborate with everybody in harmony when somebody tells the truth and is the voice of sport. But when somebody brings his voice it does not mean it is war or [an] earthquake. It is just an opinion, an expression of sport life, activity, experience …

“Of course, some of us, most of us, agree with reality. But there are not many which have the courage [to speak out].”

The speech Monday triggered a contentious week of sports politics.

The end game is far from clear.

In something of an ironic twist, meanwhile, the IOC won for "governance and transparency" from the SportBusiness Ultimate Sports Federation Awards, it was announced Thursday by SportBusiness Intelligence at SportAccord. Judging was conducted an independent panel.

In Monday’s speech, Vizer described the IOC system as “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent.” In more than 100 countries, he asserted, sport is “in misery,” with athletes “lacking the necessary basic elements — food, medication, equipment, preparation, facilities and possibility to participate to competitions.”

Almost straight thereafter, in a point that almost everyone has missed throughout the entire week of controversy that has followed, Vizer was re-elected SportAccord president for a full four-year term. SportAccord represents more than 100 Olympic and non-Olympic federations.

It wasn’t until later that day — after he had been re-elected, and intriguingly while the IOC leadership was still in town — that a letter signed by more than a dozen of the heavyweights of the Olympic sphere began circulating expressing their “disagreement” with Vizer’s remarks and their “strong support” for the IOC, for Bach and Bach’s Agenda 2020 reform plan.

On Tuesday, in an interview broadcast on SportAccord’s TV network partner, Euronews, Vizer said of the Olympic establishment, “We don’t need cardinals of sport. We don’t need popes.”

The 28-member Assn. of Summer Olympic international Federations, minus judo, of which Vizer is the president, voted Wednesday to suspend relations with SportAccord pending review.

Later in the day, ASOIF reviewed a formula under which the 28 entities would split up $550 million in revenues from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

The track and field and shooting federations, meanwhile, pulled straight out of SportAccord.

Lamine Diack, the longtime president of the IAAF, the international track and field federation, told Associated Press Tuesday that Vizer evoked “a chief or dictator coming from nowhere.”

On Thursday, Vizer, asked about Diack, said, “I want to make just one comment on this subject. I dedicate and I sacrifice my family for the sport,” adding, “In my eyes, he’s a person who sacrifices the sport for his family. No other comment.”

The reference was apparently to Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, who left his role as an IAAF marketing consultant in December pending an investigation into ethics allegations.

The winter Olympic sports association, which goes by the acronym AIOWF, called this week for “constructive dialogue.” A group called ARISF, which represents 35 non-Olympic sports, did the same -- “constructive dialogue.”

In private, there was considerable talk that Vizer’s comments might just merit some constructive dialogue.

In public, of course, there was consistent talk from the Summer Games sports federations that what Vizer had said was too much — way too much — for the diplomacy-heavy Olympic sphere.

Who, after all, invites a guest to their house — as Bach was such a guest at the SportAccord convention — and then scolds him so?

Vizer said he had repeatedly sent Bach letters asking for discussion but had been consistently been rebuffed. The IOC executive board opted not to come to SportAccord, meanwhile, which it had every year since 2003; the IOC told the two candidate cities for the 2022 Winter Games not to make presentations at SportAccord, even though bid-city presentations have been a SportAccord tradition.

Who, Vizer suggested, was snubbing who?

The IOC president, to his enormous credit, handled Vizer’s speech Monday with great grace, calling it when it was his turn at the lectern a “friendly welcome.”

Bach also drew an unmistakeable bright line:

“And when you say that the IOC and SportAccord have to cooperate in order to have a new model for the Olympic Games, for the organization and for the generation and distribution of the money, then I have to say very clearly, ‘No.’ “

Bach also said, “We have to avoid working in a parallel way that if somebody starts something and the next one is coming and saying, ‘Oh, I could do something in this respect.’ In this way, we are wasting time, we are wasting human resources, we are losing efficiency and in the end, and this is the worst of all, we are losing credibility.

‘And what we need for for our sports, if we want to promote our values, if we want to be a respected part of society, if we want to grow our sport, if we want to attract our young people, if we want to show to the world that sport has values and can do something for society, if we want to do all this, if we want then there to achieve our mission of organizing sport and to put at the same time sport at the service of society, then what we need altogether is credibility.

“And this credibility we can only achieve if we have some unity in all our diversity.”

At the ASOIF assembly Wednesday, the organization’s chief, International Tennis Federation president Francesco Ricci Bitti, had said that it was essential first to agree — only then could there be unity.

On Thursday, Vizer said, "I don’t think I have to restore something. The world of sport has to restore something, not me,” emphasizing that SportAccord would remain “the house and the partner of the international federations — those which want to stay, understand our vision, our activities, our hopes, they are welcome.

“We don’t oblige people, we don’t oblige organizations, we are open, we are welcome.”

It could be little surprise that the Summer Games federations rallied around the IOC and Bach.

“In the Summer Olympics, if there are 28 international federations from which more or less four or five are not dependent from the IOC, from the Olympic dividends, they could express their voice. That’s one thing,” Vizer said.

“But don’t forget that 24 or 25, I can not tell you exactly, international federations, Olympic Summer federations, depend totally on the IOC and IOC dividends. The area how to manipulate these federations I don’t have to explain to you.

“Everybody has to understand that sport can not exist only every four years. Sport has to exist daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Sport — it’s a chance for millions, for hundreds of millions, of people. Sport — it’s a chance for discipline, for integration into society, for a better life.

“Don’t,” he said, offering up one final hit at the IOC as the news conference closed, ”take that for millions of people — this hope, this chance — for ego, for ambition. For billions that stay in the bank. And millions of athletes are suffering. For ego, power and control of the world of sport.

“Nobody has this right, ever.”

Agenda 2020 goes 40-for-40

MONACO — To much self-promotion and -congratulation, the International Olympic Committee on Monday “unanimously” enacted all 40 points of president Thomas Bach’s review and potential reform plan, dubbed “Agenda 2020.” The potential game-changer: approval of a digital TV channel. Other significant elements: shifts in the bid process as well as to the Olympic program.

The action Monday gave Bach what he craved, approval of what he has variously described as a "jigsaw puzzle" and a “white paper.” Now comes the hard work: implementation.

How to balance considerations such as finance and the essence of Olympic tradition? Should the bobsled track for the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea be moved to save money? Isn’t it ridiculous — or worse — to pressure the Koreans to give up building a track to move the event to, say, Japan, when, for instance, the matter of the 1936 Berlin marathon, won by Korean Kee Chong Sohn, who had to compete under the Japanese flag, is still very much alive in Seoul and precincts beyond?

To move it to, say, the United States? Canada? Europe? Wouldn’t that make the Olympics something of a united world championships, the very thing Sport Accord and international judo federation president Marius Vizer had proposed just last year?

The Koreans bid twice for the Games, for 2010 and 2014, before winning for 2018. It’s not as if they didn’t know the Winter Olympics included a bobsled run, right?

More of the struggles to come:

Yay for a move from “sports” to “events” if that means the possibility of fresh additions to the program, and particularly in the Summer Games — say, for instance, surfing.

But with a cap of 10,500 athletes except in “special cases,” the policy affirmed anew Monday, which of the established sports can be counted on to give up spots to newcomers? Track and field? Swimming? Shooting? Rowing?

In a word: ha.

To be sure, Monday ushered in evolution, not revolution.

In a style that can only be described as only in the IOC, the 40 measures were voted on one by one and by a show of hands, the 96 members in attendance passing each resolution in what was described from the head table as “unanimously,” even though it was sometimes plain not all hands went up.

To be abundantly clear: no hands went up to register a vote against.

Why did the IOC not register the votes on each measure through electronic ballots, which — in December 2014 — would be simple enough? Which the IOC actually does (though it does not attribute votes cast to individual members) for its bid-city ballots?

For those who might be befuddled, it must be understood that what transpired Monday is, in its way, progress.

In IOC terms, it amounted to something that might be termed transparency. The votes were shown on closed-circuit television that was beamed out to the internet. Thus some — if not all — the members could actually be seen raising their hands.

Moreover, the IOC is not, repeat not, a democracy.

Here is another fundamental principle:

The IOC works best when the president is firmly in control.

Bach, who is German, was elected in Buenos Aires in September 2013, replacing Jacques Rogge of Belgium.

Rogge served from 2001. He took over from Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who served for 21 years.

Rogge sat Monday at the head table. Bach referred to him, among others, in the ceremonial introductions of the address that opened Sunday night’s 127th IOC session. That was, well, it. Not a word from the former president.

Since being elected in Buenos Aires, Bach has clearly sought to model himself after Samaranch, who operated with a direct yet deft touch.

For more than a year, Bach has worked energetically to secure buy-in across, within and without the Olympic movement for Agenda 2020. Though Rogge was not invited Monday to speak, Didier Burkhalter, president of the Swiss confederation, was — the IOC, of course, based in Lausanne. Agenda 2020, Burkhalter said, would enable the movement to “be proactive and change rather than be changed.”

The key item on the docket was always the creation of the digital TV channel.

To get there, though, the IOC had to work through hours of agenda items.

First up Monday morning: changes to the bid process, including a provision that in exceptional circumstances would allow events to be held outside host cities or countries.

Insiders noted that many of the bid changes, aimed at streamlining and reducing the cost of campaigning, evoked the Madrid 2020 bid that lost out to Tokyo, also in Buenos Aires.

It takes nothing away from the winning Tokyo bid to note that with as with many things in the Olympic universe, it can be a matter of timing: Madrid’s bids, particularly the 2020 campaign, its third in a row, may well have articulated an apt strategy but caught the IOC at a wrong time.

Around lunch time Monday in Monaco, the IOC moved to change the Olympic program from its traditional focus on “sports” to “events,” a potential boon for sports such as surfing, skateboarding, cricket, climbing and, as soon as the Tokyo 2020 Games, baseball and softball — again, if that is, spots can be found around that 10,500 cap.

“This is really a major step forward in the modernization of the Olympic Games,” Bach said as it passed, of course unanimously.

By mid-afternoon, the members affirmed their support for what’s called “Principle 6,” including non-discrimination on sexual orientation, a response to the firestorm over legislation in Russia before the 2014 Games.

“This is a very important step,” Bach said. “Congratulations.”

Approval of the TV channel came right after that.

Bach, speaking from the head table, called such a channel “crucial” for Olympic athletes and values between editions of the Games.

Yiannis Exarchos, head of Olympic Broadcasting Services, said it would be “the always-on, multimedia platform,” aimed at being the “ultimate” Olympic content source, initially digital only.

“This will be a truly collaborative effort [among] the Olympic family,” he said, also calling it “a challenge of Olympic proportions.”

“This will be a historic step in our existence and one we should embrace,” he urged the members.

Start-up costs were fixed at roughly $446 million euros, plus a 10 percent cushion, meaning $490 million euros all-in, or $601 million at current exchange rates.

Ser Miang Ng of Singapore, a former vice president who now chairs the IOC finance commission, said the channel represented a “substantial but necessary” investment. Break-even, he said: seven to 10 years.

“These figures are more than achievable,” said Bach, who chaired the TV channel working group.

“I think this is an excellent concept and the sooner we can launch this the better,” Larry Probst, the U.S. Olympic Committee chairman and new IOC member, said from the floor.

After the channel was approved, once more unanimously, Bach said, “This is a great, great step forward. I wish all the ones who will be involved in making this happen really good luck. This is really a historical step for the IOC an the Olympic movement. Thank you very much for your approval.”

Richard Peterkin, the witty IOC member from the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, tweeted early in Monday’s session:

Looks like we will have an abundance of unanimous acceptance votes on the recommendations. Either a good sign or we are a bunch of sheep.

— Richard Peterkin (@rncpeterkin) December 8, 2014

A few minutes later, he posted another tweet:

Just to clarify. There's nothing wrong with sheep. They taste great, make lovely wool sweaters, and know a good thing when they see it.

— Richard Peterkin (@rncpeterkin) December 8, 2014

After lunch, yet again:

My arm hurts from voting yes so often. would it be different if the votes were by blind ballot? I doubt it. Other options in the future.

— Richard Peterkin (@rncpeterkin) December 8, 2014

From the floor in the afternoon, Peterkin said, speaking directly to Bach, “Like President Obama, you are a strong proponent of change. I hope you have more success than he has.”

Bach had predicted at a news conference Saturday that all would go smoothly here.

Of course he did. He had lined everything up in advance, Samaranch-style.

It was “very encouraging,” he said at that news conference, “to see that all the stakeholders of the Olympic movement are actually supporting this Olympic Agenda 2020,” including representatives of the international sports federations, summer and winter, the national Olympic committees and athletes committees.

Beyond which, as longtime IOC member and former vice president Dick Pound pointed out in an interview Monday, the topics themselves lent themselves to an easy show of hands in favor of yes votes.

“It’s pretty much motherhood and apple pie,” Pound said, adding, “These things are obvious. Friction will be in the events. What does athletics,” meaning track and field, “have to give to create some space for new sports? What does shooting have to give? What does swimming have to give? And there will be a lot of wailing about that,” down the line.

“You look at the team sports. Do you cut a 14-team draw down to 12? There are lots of ways to slice the pie.”

Pound served as IOC vice president under Samaranch. The comparisons between Bach and Samaranch seemed manifest.

Referring to Bach, Pound said, “He’s well prepared. You look at those committees, especially the outsiders. He has got good traction there. So you’re getting a lot of good thought having gone into it. Things have been circulated. You read them — there’s very little there that has a big hook out there that you want to grab onto and want to fight. I think it has been well-managed, well-directed, well-meaning."

Pound continued: “… I’m trying to think, somebody raised the visit issue, very tentatively,” meaning whether the members could visit cities bidding for the Games, a notion Bach had emphatically shot down before all arrived in Monaco.

“There may be people with hair my color who may object to having to retire before the age of 70 or something. We’ll see. I don’t think anyone will throw themselves in front of the train for that purpose.”

The image of whether to tinker in any significant respect with the age limit didn’t even begin to come up until 5:45 p.m. — too late in the day, really, for anybody to do anything about it, given that Bach had determined mid-afternoon that he was going to hustle the members through all 40 bullet points in one day.

As the clock ticked toward 6 p.m., Bach did call on Vitaly Smirnov, the Russian member who holds a special place in the IOC, what is called the doyen, the longest-serving member. Smirnov, carefully reading from a script, backed the measure on the table that would allow for a one-time extension of a member’s term beyond age 70, to 74, for a maximum of five cases at a given time.

So deft.

So Samaranch-like, really.

“Even in, as you say, my wildest dreams, I would not have expected this,” Bach said in a wrap-up news conference Monday night, referring to the 40-for-40 unanimous yes votes, going on to deflect credit away from himself and onto the members, just the way Samaranch used to:

“It showed the great determination of the members for these reforms to make this progress and to make this happen.”

Francesco Ricci Bitti, president of the international tennis federation and the association of summer Olympic international sports federations, said, “We did open today a big window but most of the work still needs to be done. That’s the most difficult part of our job. It’s a historical day.

“Now we have to proceed step by step. If someone has signed a contract like Tokyo, they cannot change everything. There must be a balance.”

Bach wins the presidency

BUENOS AIRES -- Thomas Bach of Germany was elected president of the International Olympic Committee Tuesday, replacing Jacques Rogge of Belgium. Bach is a gold medal-winning fencer at the 1976 Montreal Games who went on to become a lawyer. He was made an IOC member in 1991 and has served in virtually every position but president. Over the years, he has made no secret of his ambition for the top job.

Now he has it, winning decisively in the second round of voting over five other candidates. He received 49 votes, two more than he needed. Combined, the other five got 44.

Bach, 59, becomes the IOC's ninth president. Eight of the nine have been Europeans. The only exception: the American Avery Brundage, who served from 1952 to 1972.

The new president will serve a term of at least eight years. IOC rules permit the possibility of a four-year second term. Bach said he hoped to lead according to his campaign motto, "Unity in diversity," and declared, "You should know that my door, my ears and my heart are always open for you.''

The intrigue in Tuesday's balloting underscored Bach's support -- completely overt -- from the Olympic world's new No. 1 power-broker, Kuwait's Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah.

Also manifestly at work Tuesday, indeed throughout this landmark 125th IOC session, at which Tokyo was selected host for the 2020 Games and wrestling was put back onto the program for the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics:  the influence of Russian president Vladimir Putin. As Bach was making his way down a line of reporters shortly after being elected, Dmitry Chernyshenko's phone rang. He heads the Sochi 2014 organizing committee. It was Putin calling, for Bach, with congratulations.

As one triangulates, let there be no doubt: Sheikh Ahmad is now unequivocally positioned as one of the most influential figures in international sport.

This, too: Bach is certainly European. But to have a key political backer who is head of the Olympic Council of Asia and head of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees is perhaps evidence of a subtle shift in the Olympic worldview.

At any rate, about this there can be no misunderstanding: the IOC election Tuesday completed a turn that through 2013 has seen an older generation of leadership moved aside by younger personalities with different ideas and new energy.

This political master drama, a classical study that academics and operatives alike could learn much from as it played out in real life over more than 10 years, intensifying over the last 18 months, culminated Tuesday in Bach's emphatic ascent.

Out: Rogge, Mexico's Mario Vazquez Raña and, in something of a rebuke to the outgoing president, his former associate, the former International Cycling Union president Hein Verbruggen of Holland. Verbruggen served Rogge in a variety of roles, including as chief of the Beijing 2008 Games coordination commission; he was also the former head of SportAccord, the umbrella group of international sport federations.

Vazquez Raña and Verbruggen have hardly disappeared from the scene, and to count them out completely -- each entirely accomplished and hugely intelligent -- might well, it is true, be premature. Now, though, the leverage and access are completely different.

In: Bach, the sheikh, the judo federation and new SportAccord president Marius Vizer, who lives in Hungary, and perhaps a handful of trusted others. This, as Bach's mandate gets underway, is the essential new power base of Olympic sport.

Bach defeated five other challengers: Richard Carrión of Puerto Rico, Sergei Bubka of Ukraine, Denis Oswald of Switzerland, Ser Miang Ng of Singapore and C.K. Wu of Chinese Taipei. Only Carrión, the IOC's finance chairman, managed even double-digits in the two rounds of voting.

In Bach, amid a world buffeted by economic, environmental and security challenges, the IOC signaled that it was not looking for transformational change.

While the other five candidates in their campaign manifestoes, or action plans, had proposed suggestions that put the IOC at the center of a variety of wide-ranging global sport and technology initiatives, Bach for the most part focused on the IOC's franchise, the Olympic Games.

"Considering the many challenges ahead, the IOC's focus must be safeguarding the uniqueness and relevance of the Olympic Games in an ever-changing world," Bach had said in his.

He also said that "keeping the Olympic Games the most attractive event in the world for all stakeholders is a top priority for the IOC."

This may not be especially bold. This might not be particularly opportunistic. Then again, the IOC tends to be traditional, especially at big moments. And, given the stakes, it makes fundamental sense when looked at in bright light.

Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, for instance, are now being referred to in influential Olympic circles as "experiment" Olympics. The capital budget for Sochi is already north of $50 billion and the new anti-gay law there has raised concerns in several Western nations. In Rio, construction is running slow and over-budget and, moreover, it was disclosed here that sponsorships are proving hard to sell.

Thus: when the IOC members looked around at this moment in time, what -- most -- did they want?

Continuity.

The Rogge years will likely be viewed, most of all, by one word: stability.

Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain served before Rogge for 21 years. Samaranch is still largely a beloved figure within the IOC. Elsewhere, the first thing that often comes up is the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, which erupted in the late 1990s.

Rogge was elected in large measure to see the IOC through the Salt Lake reforms and to restore the institution's worldwide prestige.

"You have led us through those bad times," Princess Haya al Hussein of the United Arab Emirates, president of the International Equestrian Federation, told Rogge as the assembly closed late Monday, adding he "clearly understood" the IOC's way forward was rooted in "good governance."

She said he had brought "our family out of its darkest times into a good future," years that in time people will come to understand as truly remarkable fiscally, growing the IOC's financial reserves from $100 million to more than $900 million despite the global economic crisis -- enough to survive an entire four-year Olympic cycle, indeed to secure what the princess called a "clear future."

Rogge's response was classic: "I did no more than my duty,"  he said, adding, "What has been achieved is not one man. It is a team. Thank you very much."

Rogge, an orthopedic surgeon by training, came to office on a summer Monday in Moscow in 2001. He was then 59, an IOC member for 10 years, a man of distinct vigor, his hair still dark.

After 12 years in office, he steps down in winter on a Tuesday in Buenos Aires. He is now 71. His hair is grey.

"If you want to achieve something in the IOC, you have to age," he said wryly during the assembly late Monday to Christophe Dubi, the sports director and incoming Games executive director, whom Rogge has always called "young man."

Intensely European himself, Rogge nonetheless oversaw Games for the first time in China (2008) and the IOC's "new horizons" moves to South America (Rio 2016) and, for the Winter Games, Russia (2014) and South Korea (2018).

Rogge oversaw six editions of the Games, three Summer, three Winter and, as well, ushered in the Youth Games, the first Summer edition in Singapore in 2010, the first Winter product in Innsbruck in 2012.

"The fact that I could describe six Olympic Games and two Youth Games as being successful is for me the biggest reward I could have," he said here.

Beyond Salt Lake, Rogge also had to cope with unexpectedly intensified security concerns. The 9/11 attacks took place three months after Rogge took office, just five months before the 2002 Salt Lake Games, and would add security complications to those Olympics and thereafter.

He had to confront a multitude of financial issues. Some involved a lengthy dispute with the U.S. Olympic Committee over certain broadcasting and marketing revenues. They cut a new deal last year.

There were other issues as well: illicit doping and illegal match-fixing, in particular.

Throughout, Rogge remained typically calm, almost always implacable. His management style tended toward the technocratic. It was big on process.

This could be seen in the 12 years of back, forth and sideways over the Summer Games line-up which ended Sunday with the members' vote to reinstate wrestling.

It had been kicked out in February of what was called the "core" group of sports by the IOC's policy-making executive board, then forced to fight with squash and a combined bid from baseball/softball for a place.

Squash has been on the outside looking in for 10 years. Baseball and softball were both once in and now are out. Meanwhile, over the Rogge presidency, the only additions to the Summer Games sports line-up are that, come 2016, golf and rugby-sevens will be played.

Surfing? Skateboarding? Still waiting.

Virtually everyone associated with the Olympic movement agrees the program needs wholesale review.

So, too, the bid city process. The 2020 line-up produced just three finalists -- Tokyo, Madrid, Istanbul -- after four for 2016 and five of the world's great cities for 2012.

Mostly, what the movement needs is simply a dose of new energy.

There are those who say that in Bach, the sheikh and Vizer the movement is heading in ways no one can portend.

Then again, these three also say that they -- along with the head of the Summer Games' federations' association, which goes by the acronym ASOIF, currently Francesco Ricci Bitti of Italy, the international tennis federation president -- can foresee a new way. They say it might open up new avenues of governance and, to be candid, transparency.

Big picture, the IOC is caught in transition between 19th-century club and 21st-century multibillion-dollar business.

The way the IOC is structured, authority has been far too confined between the president, the director-general and remarkably few staff. The model would hardly pass many business-school studies.

Bach surely now has a mandate.

The sole question heading into Tuesday's vote was not whether Bach would win. It was whether he would win on the first round.

"People are turning," one of the soon-to-be defeated candidates had said late Monday night, acknowledging the obvious. "For months they tell you one thing. They look at you in the eye and now tonight they tell you something else. It's very disappointing."

It is an IOC maxim that in the first round members vote for their friends. In the second they get serious.

In the first-round, Bach carried 43. Carrión got 23, Bubka 8, Oswald 7, Ng and Wu 6 apiece. IOC rules put the tie to a run-off; Ng got 56, Wu 36; Ng moved on to the second round, Wu was eliminated.

In the second round, needing 47 votes to win, Bach got those 49. Carrión took 29, Ng 6, Oswald 5, Bubka 4.

The candidacies of both Ng and Wu were apparently hurt by Tokyo's win for 2020. Five times to Asia in 12 years ... Tokyo 2020 just three days ago ... the notion of an Asian president ... it was all, as the as the senior Canadian member Dick Pound put it, "too much Asia, too soon."

Twelve years ago, Rogge -- in a field of five -- won in the second round with 59 votes; runner-up Kim Un Young of South Korea got 23.

If it seems obvious, this is a lesson Samaranch taught, and the sheikh obviously took to heart: relationships are everything, and people like to know that they matter.

This is why the line-up to see Sheikh Ahmad in Room 532 of the Hilton Hotel here throughout the week was non-stop. What was he offering inside? Coffee. Tea. Water.

On Monday evening, wearing a paisley jeans and a shirt, he stopped in front of a coffee bar in the Hilton lobby. For a solid 10 minutes, a stream of well-wishers stopped to chat.

The sheikh, 50, first signaled his strength last year when he took over as president of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees, deposing the venerable Vazquez Raña. ANOC represents the world's 204 national Olympic committees. The vote: 174 in his favor, one against, two abstentions.

Last year in London, he helped elect to the IOC executive board both Patrick Hickey of Ireland and one of Tuesday's presidential candidates, Wu.

Earlier this year, he and his team helped engineer Vizer's SportAccord election.

Then, earlier this summer, they saw to it that Buenos Aires won the 2018 Youth Games.

On Saturday, Tokyo 2020.

Tuesday, Bach.

In voting later Tuesday afternoon the sheikh helped elect Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles to the IOC's executive board. She had last served on the board in 2001.

One of the players in one of these dramas was in the Hilton lobby after the presidential election. He was willing to speak but not for the record:  "A new world is open now."