(ATR) The outgoing Olympic Games executive director takes pride in the fact that some of his strongest achievements will never be known to the public.
"The best thing," said Gilbert Felli, "is when a cook does a nice meal, you don’t have to know if he had trouble in the kitchen or not."
Felli, who joined the IOC in 1990, has been Olympic Games executive director since the position’s creation in 2003. He has guided the coordination of all Olympic Games-related activities from bidding to follow-up, a position in which he has been "permanently challenged."
"When the show comes, when the Games are coming, everything has to be perfect. All the investments made by the athletes for so many years to be at the top should not be stopped by any technical incident. Really, the same is true for people who invest in television rights or sponsors who invest … All these aspects of the Games have to run smoothly."
"It’s a permanent fight for seven years of preparation with any organizing committee."
While Felli is "happy to have been able to achieve in life something like this," his success has come with the help of a highly-skilled team.
"I’ve been lucky to be there," he said during a Wednesday visit to the Youth Olympic Village in Nanjing. "I think I’ll be very happy to [have] led an extraordinary team at the IOC administration and to achieve what I’ve been able to achieve."
On Monday, Felli will transition to an advisory role with the IOC.
"Our friends in Rio and that organizing committee will ask for more support from the IOC because that’s also one of the tasks coming out of the 2020 reforms that the IOC president wants to put in place. Then we need to spend more time with bidding cities as we go a bit more to an open proposal.
"For these two next years, I’ll have some work to do."
Christophe Dubi, who joined the IOC in 1996, will assume Felli’s former role after serving as IOC sports director since 2007.
"We know each other very well," said Felli of Dubi. "He’s had many years to learn, and we have a great team supporting him."
"He’s got all the ingredients to be a great cook."
Written by Nick Devlin.
Homepage photo: Getty Images
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