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SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns likely know outgoing International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach as the official who announced last year the state was getting another Winter Games with the words, "Salt Lake City Utah 2034.″
That wasn't the only big decision out of Paris. Before the 2024 Summer Games there ended, Bach, 71, declared he would not seek another term as president of the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee when his 12 years in office ends this June.
That sparked a scramble for the world's top Olympic post, with seven members of the International Olympic Committee jumping into what started as a wide-open race that will be decided by a secret ballot of their peers on Thursday.
The committee members running to replace Bach are:
- Prince Feisal Al Hussein, Jordan, IOC executive board member.
- David Lappartient, France, international cycling federation president.
- Johan Eliasch, Great Britain, international ski and snowboard federation president.
- Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., Spain, an IOC vice president, son of a former IOC president.
- Kirsty Coventry, Zimbabwe, IOC executive board member, Zimbabwe minister of sport.
- Sebastian Coe, Great Britain, international track and field federation president.
- Morinari Watanabe, Japan, international gymnastics federation president.
Coe, Coventry and Samaranch are viewed as the frontrunners going into the vote by around 90 committee members, but Olympic observers say the outcome is difficult to predict after a low-key campaign conducted almost entirely out of the public eye.
Utah's Olympic organizers don't have a favorite candidate, said Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of the 2034 Winter Games organizing committee board. He's in Greece for the election, being held during several days of International Olympic Committee meetings at a remote luxury resort near Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic Games.
"Whoever it is, we'll be 100% on board," said Bullock, who is well-known in Olympic circles after serving as the chief operating officer of Utah's last Winter Games, in 2002, and leading the bid to bring them back.
"I know some of the candidates fairly well," he said, declining to name names. "But I think the ability we have in Utah is we can work with anybody. We just have a style that is built around partnership and collaboration."
Rich Perelman, founder and editor of The Sports Examiner in California, said when it comes to Utah's next Olympics, he doesn't see any "significant difference" between who he and others are calling the three leading candidates, Coe, Coventry and Samaranch.
He said Coe, 68, would be a "magnetic" yet "polarizing" leader due to his strong opinions but would have a "very, very strong good working relationship" with U.S. Olympic organizers after heading up the 2012 Summer Games in London.
Coventry, 41, believed to be Bach's choice, would be the first woman president of the International Olympic Committee. But Perelman said she's seen by some as too young and inexperienced on the international stage to deal with world leaders like Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Samaranch, 65, whose late father presided over the selection of Salt Lake City as the 2002 host, was educated and does financial work in the U.S. An International Olympic Committee member since 2001, he is a candidate "everybody feels they can get along with and work with," Perelman said.
It's likely to be a tight race, he predicted, citing Lappartient and Prince Fiesal as potential wild cards.
Trump and transgender athletes in the Olympics
The campaign to lead the International Olympic Committee, at least publicly, "has nothing to do with Salt Lake in 2034," Perelman said. But the self-described lifelong Republican suggested that focus could shift because of President Donald Trump's attention-getting approach to international relations.
"I don't think we know what the issues are going to be. There are going to be issues," he said. "I don't think it's as much an issue with Utah, but what is the world going to look like post-Trump? Because he is changing the paradigm."
The president has already called on the committee to ban transgender athletes from the Olympics, rather than leaving eligibility determinations up to international sports federations as part of his "Keeping Men out of Women's Sports" executive order.
That order spells out that the United States will "to the extent permitted by law," prevent transgender athletes from entering the country for competitions, a declaration that would affect American Olympics, including the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
But Bach recently dismissed a letter from GOP members of Congress demanding the Olympics "base eligibility for women's athletic competitions on biological sex" as the result of "a fake news campaign started in Russia."
He accused Russia of creating the controversy about the gender of women's boxing medalists at the Paris Games because the Olympic Committee withdrew recognition from the Russian-led International Boxing Association. A new boxing federation is expected to be recognized by the committee this week.
The International Olympic Committee's position on participation by transgender athletes could change under a new president.
Coe has backed Trump's position and other candidates, including Coventry and Samaranch, also sees a need to revisit the International Olympic Committee policy adopted in 2021 "to protect the women's category" in competition, Perelman said.
"The question isn't, 'What does Trump think?' It's something that's already happening in the Olympic movement," Perelman said.
Canadian Robert Livingstone, the producer of GamesBids.com, also expects to see movement on the committee's transgender policy.
"It's one of the most complicated issues, I think, the IOC has faced in years," Livingstone said, adding the committee's larger emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion under Bach is also likely to be overhauled.
"As soon as a new president is elected, everything is going to change," he said. International Olympic Committee presidents are elected to an eight-year term and can run again for another four-year term. That means whoever is elected Thursday may well be in office when 2034 rolls around.
