No transparency please, we’re the IOC: Coe makes his pitch for world sport’s top job
No transparency please, we’re the IOC: Coe makes his pitch for world sport’s top job
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Briton among the seven candidates gathered in Lausanne for an election so secretive and strange it would make a Vatican cardinal wince. It sounds like a brain stumper from a particularly fiendish pub quiz. Which major 2025 election is being fought over by several presidents, a vice-president, a prince, a lord, and a politician from Zimbabwe? And, for good measure, could be won for the first time by someone from Britain?.
![[Sean Ingle]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Sean-Ingle,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The answer can be found in Lausanne, where the seven candidates hoping to become the next president of the International Olympic Committee have gathered to make their one and only direct pitch – via a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation – for the biggest job in global sport.
![[Pope Francis during a private audience with Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, in January 2025]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b4eff37d2cf5e3cf52911961653378627c3ad675/0_236_7087_4253/master/7087.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
It is also a position that carries significant diplomatic sway. When the current president, Thomas Bach, was elected in 2013, one of the first calls he received was from Vladimir Putin. The IOC was also instrumental in the brief rapprochement between North and South Korea in 2018, when President Trump and Kim Jong-un were trading insults.
![[Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/102ae6f85ccc5618010e8439af65d7599f30a378/0_200_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
But those running – including Lord Sebastian Coe, the former double Olympic champion who brought the 2012 Games to London – face an election so secretive and strange it would make a Vatican cardinal wince. Under IOC rules, for instance, they are banned from holding debates, criticising each other’s policies, or even receiving public endorsements.
![[Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/44ddf3d2acd0542cd606bf6dd5802649b20e2c00/0_190_4946_2968/master/4946.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
However, on Thursday that process gets even more weird as the candidates will make their case to the eclectic electorate of just over 100 IOC members who will decide their fate, including European and Asian royalty and business, sporting and political leaders.
