In other words, the race for the world presidency of sport is open, Giovanni Malago is a candidate

By 15 September, each IOC Member wishing to stand as a candidate in the elections – to be held at the 143rd Session from 18 to 21 March 2025 in Athens – must declare their intention to run by sending a letter to the IOC President. The following day, the IOC will publish the final list of candidates who will be able to begin their election campaign.

The current IOC President, Thomas Bach, has already announced that he will not seek a third term. Officially, the presidency will end on 24 June 2025, after 4,305 days at the head of world sport. On 10 September 2013, the former Olympic fencing champion was elected successor to the Belgian Jacques Rogge. The Bach presidency has been characterised by several episodes and situations. Always a friend of Italy and the president of CONI, Giovanni Malagò, under the legislature of the German manager, the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milan Cortina) were awarded and the Youth Games (under 18) of 2028 remain to be awarded at international level. At the national level, it was the president who made the decision to postpone the Olympic Games (Tokyo 2020) by a year following the Covid-19 pandemic that also heavily involved sport, who brought innovations to the Olympic movement by introducing the Refugee Olympic Team and bringing new disciplines to the Games program. In recent years, however, Bach has found himself in the middle of difficult problems that have caused his credibility to decline. Bach will be remembered as the president who allowed Russia to be excluded as a nation from the Olympic Games (since 2016), first for doping reasons, and then for the way he handled Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine on the sporting level, excluding Russia and Belarus not only from Paris 2024 but even from recognition in the medal table. Then there is the open and not entirely clear question of the IBA, the international boxing federation chaired by the Russian Umar Kremlev: a battle that reached its peak in recent weeks at the Olympic Games of the City of Light. It will then be necessary to clarify the situation in the federations where juries have an influence on sporting results. So many decidedly burning subjects that will have to be taken in hand by the new president of the IOC with Bach who, he hopes, will be a woman.

There are two candidates, Kirsty Coventry, 40 from Zimbabwe, twice Olympic gold medalist in swimming, and especially the current vice-president Nicole Hoevertsz, 60 from Aruba, with an Olympic participation in artistic swimming. The possible male candidates are certainly Juan Antonio Samaranch jr., 64, Spanish, IOC member since 2001, son of Juan Antonio Samaranch, IOC president from 1980 to 2001 and who died in 2010, and married to the Italian Cristina Bigelli. Juan Antonio Samaranch jr. would represent continuity. The candidacy of Sir Sebastian Coe now seems assured. “I am seriously considering it,” said the president of World Athletics a few days ago from Paris, a position that will expire in 2027. Coe, a double Olympic champion in the 1,500 meters, former president of the London 2012 Olympic Committee, has shown hostility towards Russia for nine years. A few months after the start of his presidency (2015), he suspended Russian athletics without ever readmitting it. Since spring 2022, he has been one of the hardest to exclude Russians and Belarusians from the sport. Coe was recently heavily criticized for his decision to create a $50,000 prize for the winners of Olympic gold medals at the Paris Games. There is also the name of Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan, 60 years at the IOC since 2010. Next month will be a month of reflection for many IOC members.

Considering that his future at CONI is not envisaged to date (the current rule provides for a maximum of three terms and for the moment there is no intention of change on the part of the government), Giovanni Malagò is absolutely a candidate for a possible presidency of the I.e. The current number one of Italian sport, member of the IOC since 2019, 65 years old, Roman, president of the Miliano Cortina 2026 Foundation, included in the coordination of the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028, maintains generally excellent relations at international level. The refined “Casa Italia” in Paris has been visited by thousands of people as well as by a large part of the IOC members. Malagò himself has already made it known that until the end of his term as president of CONI he does not intend to aspire to the presidency of the Football Federation (FIGC) or to run for mayor of Rome. “I am a serious person, I have a mandate (Coni) that expires on May 30, 2025, and why would one leave given the context and also after seeing Milan Cortina thinking of doing something else beyond the assumptions of the mayor rather than the Football Federation,” he said last night on 'Zona Bianca' on Rete4. In March next year, it will be the turn of the 111 members of the IOC to elect a president who will have to preserve the Olympic spirit and traditions of the past by assimilating them to the sport of tomorrow and the continuous demands for renewal, as well as understand how to reintegrate Russia and Belarus