IOC president Thomas Bach will depart next year : NPR

PARIS — Thomas Bach who led the International Olympic Committee through a decade of controversy, rising national tension and stunning sport, will step aside after his term ends in 2025.

The IOC President announced Saturday he will not consider an extension that would allow him to stay in office longer. During a speech, Bach, age 70 of Germany, said the Olympic movement would be “best served by a change in leadership.”

The IOC governs both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the two largest international sport festivals in the world. The current Summer Olympics close on Sunday in Paris.

Some IOC board members had urged Bach to seek a waiver to the term limit that requires him to step aside, but on Saturday Bach rejected that idea.

“In order to safeguard the credibility of the IOC we all…have to respect the high standards of good governance which we have set for ourselves,” Bach said.

Bach took over as head of the IOC in 2013. His tenure has often been controversial.

Under his leadership, the IOC allowed Russia to continue competing in the Olympics – albeit without flying the national flag or playing the national anthem – despite a doping scandal that erupted after the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

He led the Olympic movement through a Summer and a Winter Games marred by the Covid pandemic. Many critics believed those Games should have been canceled.

During the current Summer Games, Bach threatened to revoke the Salt Lake City Winter Games scheduled for 2034 if the U.S. doesn’t end investigations and criminal probes into the operations of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is charged with policing the use of performance enhancing drugs during the Olympics and other events.

In a speech in Paris last month, Bach also raised alarm about he future of the Olympic movement in an increasingly polarized world.

“The trends are unfortunately clear,” Bach said. “Decoupling of economies, narrow self-interest trumping the rule of law. In this new world order, cooperation and compromise are sadly considered disparaging terms.”

Before his tenure as leader of the IOC, Bach competed in the 1976 Summer Games in fencing, where he won a gold medal.

The IOC is expected to vote on a new President for the organization next March in Athens, with Bach stepping aside in June 2025. Bach said his goal was to “ensure a smooth transition, to hand over the steering wheel of our ship to my best possible successor.”