(ATR) The IOC inspection team for the 2024 Olympic bids will visit Los Angeles two weeks later than first planned in late April.
The collapse of the Budapest bid has opened up the dates set aside for this now unneeded stop of the 14-member group. Los Angeles had been scheduled for April 23-25, followed by a nearly two-week break until May 10-12, the dates reserved for the Hungary bid. The Paris inspection is set for May 14-16.
The IOC confirms to Around the Rings that the commission will now head to Los Angeles May 10-12 for its three-day visit. The group will then travel to Paris to complete the two-city inspection tour.
After Paris, the commission, if it follows past practice, returns to IOC headquarters in Lausanne to spend two or three days drafting its report that will be issued in July. The IOC vote is Sept. 13 in Lima, Peru.
The change in dates for the Los Angeles visit is a big relief to U.S. Olympic leaders who needed to be in LA for the IOC visit at the same time as a crucial general assembly of the Pan American Sports Organization in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
The new calendar for the IOC commission dates follows a snap change in the chairmanship of the IOC inspection panel. Patrick Baumann, IOC member in Switzerland and secretary of international basketball federation FIBA was named to the position Tuesday. He takes over from Namibian Frank Fredericks, who resigned following a recommendation of the IOC Ethics Commission.
Paris newspaper Le Monde reported last week that French police are investigating financial transactions from 2009 between Fredericks and Papa Massata Diack, the son of the now banished ex-president of the IAAF, Lamine Diack. The elder Diack is now in custody in France awaiting formal charges relating to accusations of bribery of Russian athletes with positive drug tests. Investigators are also examining possible links to vote-buying for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics involving Diack, who was an IOC member at the time.
Fredericks says the money he received from the younger Diack, $239,000, went to fund youth sport programs in Namibia. He denies any wrongdoing and has not resigned the IOC membership he’s held since 2012. Fredericks, a silver medalist sprinter, was also chair of the IOC Coordination Commission for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. His successor for that post has not been named yet.
Written by Ed Hula.
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