Panasonic Lumix)(ATR) Vice presidents Nawal El Moutawakel and Craig Reedie lead the way on the IOC’s new-look Executive Board.
After morning elections at the 124th IOC Session in London, a total of six newcomers join the 15-member EB, which now includes three women for the first time ever.
Thursday’s first six votes presented little drama with two candidates running for two VP slots and then four presumptive EB members merely needing confirmation from the IOC membership at large.
New Vice Presidents
Reedie of Great Britain (85 yes, 4 no) and Morocco’s El Moutawakel (81 yes votes, 10 no) replaced former VPs Zaiqing Yu of China, who steps down after two EB terms, and Italy’s Mario Pescante, who resigned his seat earlier this year.
New EB Members
Panasonic Lumix)C.K. Wu from the summer Olympic international federations, Rene Fasel from the winter feds, Patrick Hickey from the National Olympic Committees and new IOC Athletes’ Commission chair Claudia Bokel were then rubberstamped as EB members.
Wu of Chinese Taipei (88, 6); Hickey of Ireland (57, 34); and Bokel of Germany (80, 11) are first-timers while Switzerland’s Fasel is a four-year veteran.
Last-minute withdrawals from Anita DeFrantz of USA and Toni Khoury of Lebanon left four candidates for the EB’s remaining three openings, guaranteeing a healthy dose of competition for Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., Willy Kaltschmitt, Sergei Bubka and Nat Indrapana.
Spain’s Samarach Jr. of Spain was the first to succeed after tying Bubka of Ukraine in a third round of voting, then edging him 50-40 in a fourth.
Panasonic Lumix)
Bubka, a former EB member from 2000to 2008 as the athletes’ representative, then beat out Kaltschmitt by a tally of 51 votes to 43.
The final open seat came down to Kaltschmitt and Indrapana of Thailand. As with voting for the previous three seats, Indrapana was eliminated in the first ballot, falling 36-60 to Guatemala’s Kaltschmitt.
New IOC Members
In further elections, the IOC welcomed five new members to its fold, confirming the nominations put forth by the EB back in March.
Panasonic Lumix)
The newcomers are Pierre-Olivier Beckers, president of the Belgian Olympic Committee; Frank Fredericks, former Athletes' Commission chair; Aicha Garad Ali, president of Djibouti's NOC; Lingwei Li, a Chinese badminton world champion; and Tsunekazu Takeda, president of the Japanese Olympic Committee.
The membership of both Beckers and Garad Ali are contingent upon their roles as NOC presidents.
Fredericks, a four-time Olympic silver medalist sprinter from Namibia, handed over his chairmanship of the Athletes’ Commission to Bokel on Sunday, meaning he was not an IOC member for all of three days.
Takeda's nomination means Japan regains IOC representation following the recent retirement of the country's two previous members.
Li has three world championship gold medals in badminton and is considered one of the best shuttlers ever.
New IOC Session Host
Kuala Lumpur will be the stage for the 2022 Winter Olympics to be awarded in 2015, the Session ensured Thursday.
IOC members confirmed the decision taken in March by the EB, which chose the Malaysian capital over a rival bid from Lima, Peru.
A vote for 2022 tops the agenda for the 127th Session.
Reported in London by Matthew Grayson
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