Doha Prepares to Host World Sport Leaders

(ATR) The 21st Association of National Olympic Committees General Assembly will bring more than 1,000 sport leaders and media to Qatar over the next five days.

The event is being held at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha and will feature reports from past and future Olympic Games organizers as well as cities in the running to host the 2024 Games.

The busy week kicks off Sunday, Nov. 13 with the ANOC Commission and Working Group meetings. ANOC has nine commissions and working groups including athletes, youth, legal, finance and audit, international relations, marketing, medical, modernization and events.

The ANOC executives will meet on Monday led by president Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah. The executive council generally consists of 31 members but will be missing senior vice president Patrick Hickey who has temporarily stepped down from his position while he is under investigation for a ticket touting investigation at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Presentations from the Summer 2024 Olympic bid cities highlight the beginning of the general assembly on Nov. 15. Budapest, Los Angeles and Paris are the last three cities remaining in the race after Hamburg, Germany and Rome, Italy dropped out of the running. Each of the remaining cities will give a 15-minute presentation of the benefits of their bid to the Olympic Movement.

It will mark the first time that the three bid cities will showcase themselves in an official capacity to IOC members, and other members of the Olympic family.

All 205 NOCs will then view presentations from the recently-completed Rio 2016 Olympics, and the upcoming PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo 2020, and Beijing 2022 Games. It will be the first presentation by Beijing 2022 to the world's NOCs.

The third annual ANOC awards will be presented on the evening of Nov. 15. This year's awards ceremony will recognize the best performances and NOCs from the 2016 Olympics.

After the close of the ANOC General Assembly, the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa and the Pan American Sports Organizations will hold meetings on Nov. 17. In the ANOCA Extraordinary General Assembly, the body will discuss constitutional amendments approved by the Executive Board from earlier this year, before putting them to a vote. An update on the current situation with the All-Africa Games is expected to be given as well.

Like ANOCA, the PASO Extraordinary General Assembly will vote on an updated constitution that includes statutes passed from a meeting in Brasilia, Brazil last May. After passing the new constitution, a date for the next PASO election will be set, which will take place at the earliest in February 2017. Presidential candidates must submit their candidacy 90 days before the election.

Written by Kevin Nutley and Aaron Bauer

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