Who He?
Jacques Rogge is the president of the IOC - arguably the most influential position in world sport today. He succeeded the autocratic Juan Antonio Samaranch in July 2002. A Belgian national, Rogge had a professional career as an orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine lecturer before turning to sports administration and politics. He is also an ex-sportsperson, having competed at three Olympic Games and won a world championship in sailing - and has also represented Belgium in rugby. In speaking he is much the European gentleman - down to earth but with a nice manner about him.
Why New Zealand?
Rogge spoke of NZ as one of 13 founding countries of the Olympics and a country that has contributed to the Olympic Movement with both its quality of athletes and its sporting leaders. One of the reasons for his visit to this part of the World was to meet with the New Zealand Olympic Committee. He said he was not here as an "inspector" but to find out what assistance and guidance he could give.
The Real Reason
Following his more formal engagements he was heading to Auckland to be the 17th man on Alinghi in the Louis Vuitton Challenge!
Money (1)
Despite the Sydney Olympics being heralded as 'the best games ever', Dr Rogge said that the Olympic Committee should not be complacent and need to keep making improvements. Despite saying that wants the games to be "smaller and less expensive" he does not believe the number of participants will drop. A cap has been set from 2004 that restricts the number of sports in any future games to 28 and the number of athletes to 10,500 (figures taken from the Sydney Olympic Games). This means that in order for a sport to be added to the games, an existing sport will need to be dropped. It takes a majority vote to dump a sport and a 2/3 vote to add one within the 28 sports limit.
Fairness would be a major factor - fairness to the number of participants and spectators (i.e. popularity of a sport) will help decide if a sport stays or goes. The programme of sports will be reviewed periodically after each Olympics. There will be no changes to the programme for Athens, however some sports have made compromises such as sharing venues (softball and baseball) and adapting events (equestrian). Like Race Walking, equestrian 3-day eventing, is on the chopping board, (see earlier article) however the sport has managed to modify this event that sees the amount of land needed reduced from 140Ha to 30Ha and the number of cameras reduced significantly in a move to save the event.
Race Walking
Some sports may need to make modifications in order reduce costs and keep the programme manageable (this is where the race walking issue will come up). The exclusion of Race Walking is being discussed due to difficulties in judging at recent Olympics that result in the poor image of race walking events. Rogge played down his influence emphasising that any modification to a sport is not decided by the IOC but initially by the executive committee of that sport (IAAF in our case). It remains to be seen whether walking authorities will heed the warning and adapt - or die.
Drugs
Other major issues Dr Rogge feels strongly about are security and drugs. Security is always a number one issue and one that the Olympics have had to live with since Munich 1972. As for drugs - he was a World Anti-Doping Agency Council Member for 2 years and although he does not believe we can totally win the battle against drugs in sport, more scientific research is being implemented to try and close any loopholes. Rogge declined to answer when asked whether compulsory blood testing would be introduced, but emphasised that testing volumes were increasing with up to 85% of the athletes tested at Salt Lake City.
Money (2)
The IOC itself is not affected by the economic downturn, due to long term media and sponsorship contracts. 92% of its revenue is redistributed to National Olympic Committees and this revenue stream is secure for the time being. Dr Rogge's visit to New Zealand will hopefully give our Olympic Committee some inspiration and new ideas to help continue the work they are doing.
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