IOC President Jacques Rogge (centre) is surrounded by IOC members during a group photo at the 125th IOC Session at the Hilton hotel in Buenos Aires yesterday. (EPA)
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed its restored ties with the United States yesterday, after a long-standing revenue dispute was settled last year, by electing US Olympic Committee president Larry Probst into its membership.
Probst became the fourth United States member within the IOC, joining Anita DeFrantz, Jim Easton and Angela Ruggiero. Probst and US Olympic Committee (USOC) Chief Executive Scott Blackmun helped to forge a new revenue deal in 2012 after years of disputes with the IOC over the sharing of revenues from television deals and sponsorship contracts.
“I’m honoured by today’s election and proud to serve as a member of the International Olympic Committee,” Probst said in a USOC statement.
“It has been a great privilege to serve as chairman of the United States Olympic Committee and I look forward to continuing our collective efforts to advance the Olympic movement and its important values of respect, frienship and excellence.”
Probst has vowed that the United States will play a greater role in the Olympic movement. There is still no American on the IOC’s influential executive board. The United States is set to launch a bid for the 2024 Olympic Games in two years’ time with the USOC looking for a potential host venue. A further eight people were elected members of the IOC at the body’s 125th session in Buenos Aires, including Alexander Zhukov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee which is organising the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
Kenyan former marathon world-record holder Paul Tergat, Mikaela Maria Antonia Cojuangco-Jaworski of the Philippines, a former equestrian, and 2004 Athens high jump gold medallist Stefan Holm of Sweden were also voted in. Other new members were Brazilian congressman and former Olympic volleyball silver medallist Bernard Rajzman and Octavian Morariu, former Romanian international rugby player and now president of his country’s national Olympic committee.
Dagmawit Girmay Berhane, secretary general of the Ethiopian Olympic Committee and a member of the Badminton World Federation executive committee, was also elected.
Camiel Eurlings, a former Dutch politician who has taken over as the new president and chief executive of airline KLM, was voted in with King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands having stepped down from the IOC.
Oslo votes to bid for 2022 Winter Games
Oslo residents have voted in favour of bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, the Norwegian capital hoping to bring the event back to the Nordic nation of five million for a third time. With nearly all the votes counted by Monday night, 55 percent of Oslo voters supported the bid in a city-wide referendum, a big turnaround compared to earlier opinion polls that showed that high costs had turned many voters off.
“They say the budget will be 30 billion crowns ($4.98 billion) so you can expect it to blow out to twice that before we’re done,” 28-year-old store clerk Frida Nilsen told Reuters. “That seems to be a lot of money for a two-week party.” Only Almaty in Kazakhstan has formally applied to host the 2022 Winter Olympics while Barcelona and Munich are also considering bidding. Norway has hosted two Winter Olympics before, Oslo in 1952 and Lillehammer in 1994, and said it would rely primarily on existing facilities for the 2022 event. With a huge offshore oil sector filling state coffers, Norway is one of the few countries in Europe that can actually afford to host an Olympics.The country has saved up $750 billion in a sovereign wealth fund, or about 150 percent of its gross domestic product, and petroleum revenues are expected to flow into the budget well into the next decade. Applications for the 2022 Games are due later this year and IOC is expected to select the host city in 2015.
