The Race to Olympia: Watanabe, Eliasch and Trump

Morinari Watanabe and Johan Eliasch are outsiders to become IOC President but have helped make the campaign more interesting. A trip to Russia by Watanabe, however, has caused anger in Ukraine

We are indebted to two candidates in particular for enlivening this campaign for International Olympic Committee President, making it far more interesting to cover than I had initially expected. Not surprisingly, both are generally viewed as outsiders. Making a big splash could therefore be seen as a rational strategy for them, a way to make member-voters who might already have more familiar names at the front of their minds sit up and take notice.

Morinari Watanabe, Japanese President of the International Gymnastics Federation, has advocated by far the most radical policies: namely staging the Games simultaneously on all five continents and involving all National Olympic Committee and Olympic International Sports Federation Presidents directly in IOC governance/decision-making apparatus.

He has also successfully dramatized his own strong peace-and-sport credentials by responding to that car-crash meeting between United States President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky by hopping on a train and making a 14-hour journey to Kyiv.