Meet the torch bearer of Queensland’ Olympic dream
If Queensland is to win the bid to host the 2032 Olympic Games, this is the man we need to impress.
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As a wide-eyed seven-year-old boy, Thomas Bach was struck by the graceful, gazelle-like stride of the African-American woman. It was the first true TV Olympics – Rome circa 1960 – and for the young Bach watching at home, the sight of Wilma Rudolph’s striking sprinting, winning gold in three events, ignited an Olympic flame that has endured six decades.
It culminated in 2013 when he was elected to the most powerful position in world sport, president of the International Olympic Committee.
There is a photograph of Rudolph and her story on the wall in Bach’s office at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland – a reminder of that “extraordinary” performance and the moment that became an indelible influence on his life and career. One that led to his own Olympic sporting glory.
“I was swept away with what I saw in Rome – it was the first real television Olympics and to see the grace and emotion of the athletes … it was remarkable,” Bach says.
It is important for Australia that we understand what drives Thomas Bach, 65, the workaholic German lawyer, who has made significant reforms to the IOC since taking over as president six years ago.
Bach is the ultimate ringmaster – the man with Queensland’s long-term future in the palm of his hands. Bach’s style is seen as the polar opposite to his predecessors, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Jacques Rogge, the Belgian-born administrator. Much has been made of the heady Samaranch days. Suffice to say they seem a thousand years away from the open and transparent ethos being implemented by Bach.
Those close to Bach say he loves to be across just about everything. He wants to know the detail, demands to know the complexities.
Bach’s imprimatur for a Queensland Olympic bid will be crucial. Bach will soon announce a new subcommittee, the Future Hosts Commission. Its job will be to pour over prospective host cities for 2032 and work with them to come up with a final recommendation. This recommendation will go to the IOC executive, which will likely rubber stamp it before it is voted upon by the 105 IOC members, as early as 2021.
The days of IOC members and their wives being flown around the world and lauded with gifts to secure their vote are gone. Today’s Olympic bidding process is transparent. The best bid – not biggest wallet – will win. Bach’s preferred bid city in 2032 will take a big advantage into the final vote.
For the IOC and Queensland, so far so good. In Switzerland last month, Bach hosted a Queensland delegation led by premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates. Also in the Queensland delegation was Star Entertainment Group chairman John O’Neill, federal MPs Ted O’Brien and Milton Dick and SEQ Council of Mayors representative, Mark Jamieson.
In line with new IOC candidature protocols, for both sides, it was a listening exercise. The IOC wanted to know how “fair dinkum’’ Queensland was about hosting in 2032 and the Australian delegation was keen to understand how the IOC could deliver on its promise of a cost-neutral Games.
Like two 20-something lovers in the first flush of romance, it was whether they believed it was worth taking the relationship to the next level. It is clear we are now past the champagne and chocolates stage.
Consummation may be a little way off – maybe Tokyo Olympics time – but there is certainly a mutual attraction.
The relationship struck between Bach and Palaszczuk is central to Queensland’s Olympic bid. There is no doubt Bach and the Queensland Premier share the same principles around values and ideals. The Labor Premier’s strong pro-women policy has resonated with Bach.
The IOC’s female membership has grown significantly under Bach, now representing a third of its members.
It is also clear that Bach and Palaszczuk trust each other. Their political ideology is bonded by a commitment to gender equality, a fair go for everyone and a sustainable Games. The new IOC headquarters in Lausanne, said to cost half a billion dollars, is the most environmentally sustainable building ever built in Europe.
Bach is also a big fan of south-east Queensland, having spent a week here for the SportAccord sport and business summit in May this year. He and the Premier bonded over Queensland seafood at Persone restaurant in Brisbane’s CBD. She called it mudcrab diplomacy.
Bach is also acutely aware of Australia’s love affair with sport, and its successful Olympic tradition. He was in Sydney in 2000, where Samaranch described the Games as “the best ever’’.
Bach understands that from a political, economic and safety perspective, Queensland is a good bet. But that does not mean we are home and hosed. There is speculation that Shanghai is considering a bid, as is St Petersburg in Russia.
Bach is close to Vladimir Putin. When he became IOC president, Putin was the first person to call and congratulate Bach, who has been criticised in the past for turning a blind eye to state-sponsored Olympic doping by Russia.
Other potential bids could come from India, Indonesia and his native Germany.
For Palaszczuk, the political stakes attached to an Olympic bid are high. She rolled her very own powerful deputy, Jackie Trad, in Cabinet to proceed. Trad is also Treasurer and was concerned about the cost. In the end, it was Palaszczuk and her Tourism Minister Kate Jones who convinced Cabinet that the Olympics was worth pursuing.
The business community is 100 per cent supportive. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, himself a big sports fan, wants the Olympics in Queensland. He has a huge debt to repay Queensland after the election result on May 18.
On the eve of last month’s visit to Lausanne, wildfires ravaged Queensland. The Premier had to weigh up whether to go to Switzerland to honour her commitment to an invitation from Bach, or stay for the fires, which had razed 20 homes.
She went to Switzerland but returned early, jettisoning the Paris leg of the trip. It was a smart and judicious move. Bach understood her political dilemma and was appreciative that she had made the trip in difficult circumstances. He went out of his way to mention on several occasions that the IOC was with Queensland at this difficult time.
BACH’s PASSION
Bach is a relationships-driven guy. He has an easy, empathetic manner and he is bringing his staff with him on the massive reform agenda. He is also singularly focused. He refused to go to kindergarten as a child. Told his parents it was too boring.
At the very heart of Bach’s Olympic philosophy is a commitment to the athletes. As Queensland progresses with its 2032 dream, every decision must be made with a simple question – how will this affect or help the athletes?
There is also the Bach passion, the competitive flame that sparked his rise to prominence in the Olympic movement.
In a rare interview in his IOC headquarters office in the Swiss city of Lausanne, Bach – fluent in English, French and Spanish as well as his native German – points to that photo of Wilma Rudolph on his wall.
In an epiphany that bordered on a religious conversion, it was a few years after Rudolph’s 1960 Olympics gold trifecta that Bach truly understood the significance of her triumph over adversity – a feat which he says embodies the Olympic spirit.
It demonstrated to Bach that diversity, gender equality and beating the odds is the best example of the modern Olympic values and ideals.
Rudolph was born prematurely and suffered from pneumonia and scarlet fever as a child. At age five, she contracted infantile paralysis caused by the polio virus.
Physically disabled for much of her early life, Rudolph wore a leg brace until she was 12. Doctors told her she would be lucky to walk properly, let alone run.
He takes up the story.
“I watched everything (from Rome),’’ he says. “The two images I remember from those Games is Abebe Bikila (the Ethiopian long distance champion) running barefoot to win the marathon and Wilma Rudolph. Her elegant style, the graceful running. Extraordinary.’’
A good soccer player as a boy, Bach grew up in the small German industrial town of Tauberbischofsheim.
“Football was my passion,’’ he says.
One day, his parents suggested he should take up fencing.
“I was not attracted to fencing,’’ he says. “My parents forced me into it. Today people would say I was hyperactive. I was playing mainly football, riding my bike.
“My parents decided that I needed some treatment for the hyperactivity. I had to be somehow regulated.
“They said, ‘You are doing great in sport. How about you join a sports club?’
“There was a young man there who had just started a fencing club. They were all excited about this guy.
“There were tears and discussions with my parents. I categorically refused. My parents were used to this refusal. I refused to go to kindergarten. I found it too boring.’’
It was then that the Bach family settled on a compromise. Young Thomas agreed to go to the club but would not do fencing – just the sports exercises. They argued it would help his football.
Bach bought this argument and went to the local fencing club.
“He was a charismatic guy and everybody else fenced, except for me,’’ Bach recalls. “So on the second or third visit I started to fence.’’
The rest, as they say is history. Bach would go on to win a gold medal for fencing at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.
Fencing taught Bach about the value of speed and being quick off the mark and getting into your opponent’s head – what is the opponent thinking?
They are skills that he believes have helped him in sports administration.
“What I liked and learned (in fencing) is that it is good, also in life, try to put yourself into the shoes of the other side,’’ he says.
“What is this guy wanting to do?’’
If Wilma Rudolph fanned the flames of his love affair with the Olympics, winning a gold medal in Montreal sealed his burning passion.
The thrill of competing, standing on the dias to accept the gold medal, was a blur.
“I felt so tired,’’ he says.
“All this tension is falling off from you. It was not explosive. I realised only what we had done when we got home.’’
In his hometown village of 10,000 people, the welcoming parade attracted 30,000. They came from everywhere.
“The whole town was blocked off,’’ he says.
“There was a convoy through the streets. The army was there. The fire brigade. The police. Then we realised what we had done.
“I said in my speech on behalf of the athletes that the people had shown to us what it means to be Olympic champions.’’
In 1979, Bach was elected by the German athletes to be their chairman and spokesman. It was during this period that discussions began about the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Many countries boycotted the Games, including the United States. Bach fervently lobbied the German Government on behalf of the athletes to attend Moscow. The decision was made to boycott.
It still rankles Bach.
“Australia took the right decision (to participate),’’ he says. “Germany, under pressure from political parties, took the wrong decision and we had to boycott and I lost this fight for my fellow athletes.’’
It also robbed Bach of the opportunity to defend his Olympic fencing gold medal. In everything Bach does as IOC president, it is through the prism of the athletes. He believes it is the athletes who make the Games. After the Moscow boycott, Bach was quickly drafted into the role of head of the German Olympic organisation, ultimately becoming an IOC member.
When first approached to join the IOC, Bach gave an answer immediately. “I said yes,’’ he says. “They said you can think about it. “I said, ‘No, I don’t need to think about this’. I do not want to happen to future generations of athletes what happened to us.’’
Bach and his wife of 40 years, Claudia, moved from Germany to Switzerland for him to take up the post. He quickly delivered on the promises he made when campaigning for the job, to reform the bidding process. Those 40 reforms – known as Olympic Agenda 2020 – were passed unanimously this year.
“People have to know why you are doing something, otherwise the times are over that you can convince people,’’ he says. “People do not follow an IOC president because he is IOC president. They do not follow a prime minister because he is a prime minister.
“You have to explain the vision, allow people to know where you want to go and why you want to go there.
“We (have) achieved with the Olympic agenda because the vision is clear. This is where we want to go and this is not just a piece of paper.
“This is real. I definitely think Queensland has the great potential to be an excellent host. This is what the candidature procedure is about, to find the best possible host.
“I share the Aussie love of sport and passion for sport. This, when translated into an Olympic candidature, makes this a strong one. But I need to say there are also others. They also have their assets and advantages.
“The ball is in the court of Australia.’’
FANNING THE OLYMPIC FLAME
Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates is seen as a close ally of Bach. Coates headed up the candidature reform committee that spearheaded the new model.
Bach consistently seeks Coates’ counsel.
Coates says visitors to Bach’s office will see a message on the outside wall of his office which reads: “Change or be changed’’.
“Those four words mean a great deal in the Olympic movement,’’ says Coates.
“President Bach has been the catalyst for great change and, importantly, necessary change.
“The hallmarks of his tenure are two great pillars around which his Olympic presidency has been built.
“Through the Olympic Agenda 2020, the economics of bidding for and hosting the Olympic Games has been changed for the better. Affordability will provide an enduring and sustainable legacy for the Games hosts.
“The creation of the international testing agency is another landmark initiative in the continuing fight against doping.’’
Coates says Bach was elected to office at a time of “many challenges’’.
“To negotiate the Olympic movement through them has been no small feat,’’ he says.
“In fact it’s been quite extraordinary.’’
As a former Olympic athlete, Bach understands the sacrifice and hard work that goes into being a gold medallist.
It is clear that his favourite time as Olympic president is those two weeks every four years when the world comes together for the Greatest Show on Earth.
Asked about the Sydney triumph of Cathy Freeman, which united Australia, he pauses.
“When I see this, I have to wipe my eyes,’’ Bach says.
“I get emotional. Such an achievement. When you see the great athlete being cheered and embraced by the crowd, then you just feel with these guys. You are so happy. It is the tears of joy.’’
For Queensland, the challenge is clear. We must present such a compelling, irresistible offering for 2032 that no other city gets close.
It is obvious that Bach has a positive connection to the Australian bid. He understands the transformational nature of a city hosting an Olympic Games.
He sees Queensland as a progressive, modern society with a deep and resounding commitment to its children and future.
Every Games has a star. Wilma Rudolph in Rome, 1960. Mark Spitz in Munich, 1972. Carl Lewis in Los Angeles, 1984. Our own Ian Thorpe in Sydney, 2000.
Perhaps in 2032, like a young Bach, a wide-eyed seven-year-old may look up to an athlete with the star-power of Wilma Rudolph in 1960 and dream of one day standing on the gold medal dais. For Bach, that is his ultimate legacy, his personal Olympic torch.
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