Igniting the Games

David Miller

Description

The US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics left German lawyer Thomas Bach unable to defend his fencing title. Instead, he devoted the next 20 years to climbing the sports administrative ladder. His mission was to protect athletes' independent rights, and his ambition to become IOC president. Bach was elected IOC president in 2013, and immediately set about transforming the organisation's century-old constitution. His 40-point agenda launched a radical host city election procedure, while enforcing the International Federations' internal disciplines and introducing new Olympic sports such as skateboarding. New age Olympics had arrived - but it wasn't all smooth sailing. With Russia's institutional cheating marring three consecutive Games, the near financial collapse of Rio '16 and the threatened cancellation of Tokyo 2020, Bach sustained IOC equilibrium through repeated crises. Igniting the Games reveals how Bach transformed the Olympics and saved a ponderous ancient institution from itself.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 11 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801502948
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
David Miller, 2022
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword By Seb Coe
1. Bach s Brinkmanship, Putin s Atrocities
2. Where Stands Empire-Intent Xi Jinping?
3. Long-Term Legacy
4. Vogt s Inaugural Leap
5. Evolving Targets
6. Reforms Up, Expenses Down
7. A Huge Task
8. Evil Exposed
9. Double-City Celebration
10. Peninsula False Dawn
11. Confronting Covid
12. Brisbane 2032 Coup
13. Emotions Released
14. Valieva s Trauma
15. Burgeoning Chinese Sport
16. Defining Women s Sport?
Photos
Other Books by David Miller
Our Sporting Times (anthology, 1996)
Olympic Guardians (2010)
Official History of the IOC and Olympic Games 1894-2018 (updated quadrennially from 2004)
Touching the Heart - Why Sport Matters (2019) (Memoir in exclusive financial aid of Starlight Childrens Foundation)
Official Arsenal Opus (co-author 2011)
Earlier biographies of Matt Busby (1970), Trevor Francis (1982), Sebastian Coe (1981, 1984, 1994), Juan Antonio Samaranch (1992), four World Cup accounts (1970-1982)
DEDICATION
With deepest love and gratitude, this pubication is dedicated to Marita, my wife of 61 years, whose enduring devotion to her family s existence sadly closed just over four years ago. My enduring debt to her loyalty lies in common alongside that of countless wives: Marita sacrificed, in the belatedly transforming male-dichotomous Sixties, her potential professional independence so that she might support mine. A commitment many men were and still are today reluctant to acknowledge. I could never have sustained a hectic schedule as journalist and author had Marita not been the buttress of domestic solidarity with children and grandchildren.

Author and wife at 96th birthday of oldest ever IOC Member, Vladimir Stoytchev of Bulgaria, at his Sofia apartment in 1988: professional military equestrian at Paris 24, fierce opponent of fake USSR civil service amateurs .
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
IT IS not always simple when the successful attempt to provide advantages for the less fortunate. In the early years of Pierre de Coubertin s exclusive International Olympic Committee, the majority of Olympic competitors were white, middle-class and could afford the boat fare to the Games. By the mid-20th century, many thousands of them were hard pressed either to train or pay the rail fare to regular work. While one per cent became wealthy when professionalism was accepted by the 1980s, the majority are still partially dependent on the IOC s re-investment of 90 per cent of their sponsorship and broadcast income in subsidy of athletes. While I was striving, unavailingly, for Olympic inclusion in 1956, out of pocket from training and unable to pay the electricity for a two-room apartment, I was grateful to Lord Luke, UK IOC member and director of Lloyds Bank and of Bovril, for the offer of part-time vacation work. As author and journalist, it has been rewarding to witness the countless hours of loyalty and available spare time given by a proportion of IOC members to voluntary duty: dedicated to sustaining Pierre de Coubertin s exclusive innovation which for 126 years has injected global society with a concept of honour, camaraderie and opportunity.
An easy media target by being self-elected, the IOC has had acknowledged faults, yet has survived, indeed thrived, on account of its timeless brand image: concern for the welfare of others. I first encountered this in 1972 when IOC member Willi Daume, CEO of Munich s Olympics, having seen my biography of Matt Busby with reflection on the Munich air crash, organised my tour of the city s spectacular new stadia. Daume was an organiser as profound in detail as compatriot Thomas Bach 40 years later. The longer I became concerned with Olympic administration, the more indebted to hours of time and advice from members preoccupied with delivering Games worthy of the world s best. From among the 600-plus members during my working lifetime: Michael Killanin, more clubbable than any but knotted by triangular rivalry between International Federations, National Olympic committees and IOC; Juan Antonio Samaranch, inviting me on his four exploratory tours of Africa, Central Asia, the Pacific and the Far East, from which I assembled his biography Olympic Revolution ; details of political intrigue from, in particular, Alexandrou Siperco (Romania), Ivan Slavkov (Bulgaria), Ung Chang (North Korea); Russian empire autonomy, Vitaly Smirnov; inter-continental collaboration and media, Kevan Gosper and John Coates (Australia); essential ethics, Vladimir Stoytchev (Bulgaria), Prince de Merode (Belgium), Richard Pound (Canada); Africa s imbalances, Reggie Alexander (Kenya), Sam Ramsamy (South Africa), Henry Adefope (Nigeria); Asian emergence, Kim Un-Yong (South Korea), He Zhenliang (China), Timothy Fok and Sonny de Sales (Hong Kong), Ser Miang Ng (Singapore); Charter principles, Francisco Elizalde (Philippines), Nicos Filaritos (Greece); etiquette, Kip Keino (Kenya), Rania Elwani (Egypt), Grand Duke of Luxemborg; gender balance, Anita Defrantz (USA), Flor Fonseca (Venezuela); athlete integrity, Peter Tallberg (Finland), Anton Geesink (Netherlands); International Federations consistency, Francesco Ricci-Bitti (Italy), Philippe Chatrier (France); Gian Franco Kasper (Switzerland), Els Van Breda Vriesman (Netherlands); NOC responsibility, Walter Troeger (Germany), Raymont Gafner (Switzerland), Gunilla Lindberg (Sweden), Prince of Orange (Netherlands); India/ Pakistan relations, Ashwini Kumar (India), Wajid Ali (Pakistan); fair play, Comte Jean de Beaumont (France), Lance Cross (New Zealand), Paul Henderson (Canada); administrative discipline, Marc Hodler (Switzerland), Craig Reedie (GBR), Witold Banka (Poland); publicity, Primo Nebiolo (Italy); broadcasting, Alex Gilady (Israel).
Initially this publication was intended to be a short extension of Olympic Guardians , my collective biography of the eight presidents. When the extent of Bach s reformation became apparent, an individual assessment was obvious.
My incentive was identity with Thomas s maxim: Change or be changed . For inter-school matches, we used to be required to provide a linesman. For away matches, I requested as captain for permission to take a boy who knew the Laws . I might as well have asked the headmaster for draught vodka in the changing room: as a Cambridge hurdler, he once arrived for training advice in pinstriped trousers. A boyhood hero was double Olympic 800m champion Mal Whitfield. At White City s August British Games in 1953, preparing for the junior 100m, breathtakingly I found myself warming up centre-field beside the tracksuited icon - he telling me this bit is as important as the race . The next week I bought a track-suit, and was ostracised by colleagues for professionalism . In 1976, 20 years before Arsenal s revolutionary appointment of Arsene Wenger, I flew with chairman Denis Hill-Wood - under assumed names, then permissible - having persuaded him (no fee for me!) to engage Europe s foremost coach, Yugoslav/Montenegran Miljan Miljanic, the first to have defeated Liverpool at Anfield with Red Star Belgrade. We failed, Miljanic having re-signed with Santiago Bernabeu. A year later, 15 years before the Champions League was created out of the knock-out European Cup, I organised through the Daily Express a gathering of Glasgow Rangers, Ajax and Arsenal with UEFA secretary Hans Bangerter to discuss formation of a league competition. Fantastic, believed the clubs! Too early, thought Europe. A year later, ten years before the IOC accepted professionalism, and convinced Daley Thompson was a decathlon champion for Moscow 80, I tried to persuade new Express owner Victor Matthews - Trader Vic to the tabloids - that if he would sponsor Thompson s training, I would match every 1,000 donated with a personal 100. Matthews personally preferred his own projection in golf. British sport has tended to cling to established convention. Some 40 years on, I sensed that the financial tide was turning against the future of the IOC, for all its indulgence of athletes, NOCs and IFs: that in Thomas Bach lay determination for the institution to evolve.
Alongside allegiance to the IOC, fulsome recognition is due to agencies to which I have contributed over the years; sometimes gratuitously, and with agreement to quote extracts - Sport Intern , with the benign collaboration of proprietor Karl Heinz Huba, Duncan Mackay s exhaustive Insidethegames , and Rich Perelman s expert Sports Examiner, together with courtesy of several extracts from the IOC s in-house Olympic Review. I would often have been adrift without an oar but for fellow scribes support: Alain Lutzenfichter, Robert Pariente, Stan Greenberg, Morley Myers, Mel Watman, Philip Barker, David Owen, Franco Fava, Wolf Lyberg, Leif Josefsson, Steve Wilson and Markus Kecht. Welcome counsel from Michael Beloff QC, guidance by Jon Tibbs Associates, plus critical opinion from Antoine