MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. The "cancer" that is Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is finally leaving the world’s governing Olympic body, President of the International Boxing Federation (IBA) Umar Kremlev said on Wednesday.
Last Saturday, Bach officially announced that he had decided against running in the IOC presidential election, which will be held at the organization’s session in Greece in March 2025.
"This cancer is finally leaving us, because the [Olympic] competition took us back to gladiator times," Kremlev stated. "There was food with worms and poor-quality medals. Bach was right to say that he cannot cope."
"He turned sports into dirty politics and started an attack on sports disciplines," Kremlev added. "The IOC must stand firm for countries’ interests."
Thomas Bach, who won an Olympic gold medal in fencing for Germany, was elected president of the IOC in 2013 at the 125th IOC session in Buenos Aires for a term of eight years.
Bach, 70, won his Olympic gold in the team foil competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. After serving his initial eight-year term as IOC president, he ran for another four-year term in the 2021 elections, where he was the sole candidate and was ultimately re-elected.
At the 141st IOC Session in India’s Mumbai last October some IOC members floated the idea of amending the Olympic Charter so that Bach could be re-elected for yet another term as president of the global organization.
Athletes from Russia were subjected to a series of sanctions since IOC President Bach took the reign over the IOC.
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games were hosted by the French capital of Paris between July 26 and August 11. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed a team of 15 Russian athletes to participate in the 2024 Summer Olympics as neutrals.
The Russian team’s lineup included tennis players Daniil Medvedev, Pavel Kotov, Roman Safiullin, Yekaterina Alexandrova, Mirra Andreeva, Diana Shnider, Yelena Vesnina; canoeists Zakhar Petrov, Alexey Korovashkov, Olesya Romasenko; swimmer Yevgeny Somov; cyclists Tamara Dronova, Alyona Ivanchenko, Gleb Syritsa; and Anzhela Bladtseva, who competes in trampoline event.
Team USA finished the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in the top of the medal standings having packed 126 medals (40 gold, 44 silver and 42 bronze), leaving in 2nd place China with 91 medals (40 gold, 27 silver and 24 bronze) and Japan with 45 medals (20 gold, 12 silver and 13 bronze).
IOC’s regulations against Russia
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board convened for a meeting at the Olympic House in Lausanne, Switzerland, on March 19-20 and following the opening day it decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in the Parade of Athletes and also exclude them from the 2024 Olympics overall medal standings.
The IOC, however, ruled that Russian athletes, cleared to participate in the 2024 Olympics, would not have to sign anything denouncing their country’s special military operation in Ukraine.
On October 12, 2023, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) until further notice after the Russian organization included the Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions as its members.
The Swiss-based CAS registered on November 6, 2023 an appeal from the ROC against the IOC’s decision on the Russian governing Olympic body’s suspension.
The suspension meant that the ROC cannot act as a national Olympic committee or receive financing from the Olympic movement. The IOC however reserved the right to clear Russian athletes to take part in the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 as neutrals. Later, IOC President Thomas Bach said that Russian athletes should have no affiliation with the ROC if they want to compete at the Olympic Games.