Thomas Bach Unanimously Re-elected IOC President

Olympic champion Thomas Bach has been re-elected for an additional four-year term as President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the 137^th IOC Session held virtually today. 

Thomas Bach, who won gold with the German foil fencing team at the Olympic Games Montreal 1976, was elected as IOC President at the IOC Session in 2013 in Buenos Aires for a first eight-year term. This term will finish on the closing day of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 on 8 August this year. His second term as IOC President will start immediately after, and will conclude in 2025. Bach received 93 votes in his favor of his re-election, and 1 vote against.
 

Reacting to his re-election, Bach said, “Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for this overwhelming vote of confidence and trust. For me, this is even more overwhelming considering the many reforms and the many difficult decisions we had to take, which affected all of us. You know that this touches me deeply. It also makes me humble. When you elected me for the first time as your President in 2013 in Buenos Aires, I said that I wanted to lead the IOC according to my campaign motto ‘Unity in diversity’ and be a President for all of you and for all our stakeholders. This commitment is also true for my second and last term. My door, my ears and my heart remain open for each and every one of you. I hope that I can count on your continued dedication, support and friendship also during these four more years.”

In his acceptance speech addressing the IOC Members, Bach said, “In the meantime, you know me well enough that I would also like to look forward and continue to achieve ambitious goals with you also in the post-coronavirus world. We learned during this coronavirus crisis, the hard way, that we can live up to our Olympic slogan ‘faster, higher, stronger’, in sport and in life, only if we are working together in solidarity. Therefore, I would today like to inspire a discussion – a discussion with you and everybody interested in the Olympic community – on whether we should not complement this slogan by adding, after a hyphen, the word ‘together’: ‘Faster, higher, stronger – together’. This could be – from my point of view – a strong commitment to our core value of solidarity, and an appropriate and a humble adaptation to the challenges of this new world.”

As an athlete, Thomas Bach was a world-class fencer, winning an Olympic gold medal. He also won two gold medals with the German foil fencing team at the World Championships in 1976 and 1977. He was a founding member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission in 1981, on which he remained until 1988. In 1991, he became an IOC Member and sat on the IOC Executive Board between 1996 and 2013. He served as IOC Vice-President from 2000 to 2004, 2006 to 2010, and from 2010 until his election as IOC President in September 2013.

During his presidency, Thomas Bach received the prestigious Seoul Peace Prize and was awarded the Cem - Papandreou Peace Award. He was also the main driving force behind Olympic Agenda 2020.
 

Bach has proven to be a polarizing figure outside of the International Olympic Committee. His reforms of the Olympic Movement have found both avid supporters and vocal critics. With his re-election, the International Olympic Committee has reaffirmed their commitment to Bach’s agenda, and his reforms for governance, gender equality, and sustainability.