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THOMAS Bach is to be re-elected for a second term as president of the International Olympic Committee this week.

Bach will run unopposed for the four-year term at an election at the 137th IOC session, which is being held online via video conference from today up to Friday. Bach’s first term was for eight years — he was first appointed in September 2013.

The German renews his leadership of the IOC as the organisation navigates one of the greatest challenges in its history: the staging of the postponed Tokyo Olympics amid the ongoing pandemic.

Bach and the IOC executive board received updates on that project, among other matters, at a meeting on Monday.

The Japanese government and local organisers, and the IOC, are committed to running the event, despite concerns among the Japanese public about the feasibility of running it safely during the pandemic.

Media reports covering Bach’s upcoming re-election underscored the tumultuous period he has already overseen as IOC president. This has included two Olympics, Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, that were beset by problems, including political controversy and criticisms over the cost of staging, as well as the Russian doping scandal and now the pandemic.

Bach is overseeing a major overhaul of the IOC’s strategy and priorities, Agenda 2020, which will at this week’s IOC Session be extended and rechristened Agenda 2020+5. Among other goals, the project has sought to reduce the cost of bidding for and hosting Olympic Games, and to improve the environmental sustainability of the events. In December, the IOC said 85 percent of the 40 recommendations in Agenda 2020 had been achieved.

After Tokyo, another tricky Olympics is on the horizon, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

American politicians have been stepping up calls for the event to be boycotted in response to China’s activities to ‘pacify’ its restive Xinjiang province, which the US government has labelled a genocide.

China has poured extraordinary resources into staging the event and using it to kickstart the creation of a domestic wintersports industry.

If the government investment is successful, it could create the world’s biggest wintersports market, and be an enormous boon for Winter Olympic sports.

The IOC last month took a step towards what looks like a less contentious bet as an Olympics host with the selection of Brisbane as the “preferred candidate” for the 2032 Summer Games.

Under a new process introduced by Agenda 2020, the IOC is dispensing with the traditional costly bidding process that pits cities against each other, and going straight into talks with what looks like a promising bid from the Australian city.

IOC members are to receive reports from a host of areas of the committee’s activity this week, including from the organising committees of the Tokyo Olympics, Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024.

Agenda 2020 will be discussed on Wednesday and Agenda 2020+5 on Friday.

Gender balance
On International Women’s Day on Monday, the IOC declared that nearly 49 percent of athletes at the Tokyo Olympics would be women, making it “the first gender-balanced Olympic Games in history”.

The competition schedule has been adjusted since Rio 2016 to ensure “equal visibility between women’s and men’s events”.

There will be 18 mixed events, an increase of nine since the last summer Olympics.

For the first time, all 206 participating National Olympic Committees are being required to have at least one female and one male athlete on their teams, and are being encouraged to have their flag carried by a female athlete as well as a male.

At the Tokyo Paralympics, 40.5 percent of athletes will be women, meaning a record 1 782 female athletes.

Last month, the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics organising committee added 12 female members to its executive board. The move followed the resignation of former organising committee chief Yoshiro Mori after he made sexist remarks, causing a major scandal, and the appointment of new OC leader Hashimoto Seiko. — Sport Business