Skateboards to Roll in Nanjing, Session Set in Monaco

(ATR) IOC president Thomas Bach announces an extraordinary session in 2014 to enact potentially far-reaching changes for the Olympics.

Bach said the session will take place Dec. 6-7 in Monaco where Prince Albert, IOC member, is also head of state. Bach said Albert had agreed to host the session in the principality on short notice.

The two day session will enact a range of changes to the Olympics and IOC under the umbrella of what Bach calls Olympic Agenda 2020.

The announcement comes after Bach and his IOC colleagues took part in an unprecedented four-day brainstorming session held in the Swiss city of Montreux, east of IOC headquarters in Lausanne. The brainstorm was meant to discuss and debate issues ranging from the sports program of the Olympic Games and governance issues such as the retirement age of IOC members, now set at 70.

Bach said the brainstorming in Montreux was the first such exercise in his 23 year experience as an IOC member. He called the meeting "fruitful, intensive and constructive". Hesays some decisions were made by the Executive Board that will have immediate effect.

First is the establishment of two funds with $10 million each. One tranche of funding will underwrite new research in anti-doping meant to protect clean athletes. Bach says matching funding from governments will be sought. The second fund will go towards establishment of an anticorruption, anti-manipulation system of intelligence to protect the Olympics from subterfuge.

Regarding the bids for 2022 winter Olympics, Bach says the six applicant cities will be encouraged to use as many temporary or demountable venues as possible. Bach says this new requirement is presented in the interest of staging sustainable games. And he says a working group will be formed to further study cost management of the Olympic Games.

The final decision taken at the brainstorming (none of the three will require action from the IOC session) is to issue invitations to skateboarding, sport climbing and roller sport for demonstrations at the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games next August 16-28, along with the Chinese martial art of Wu Shu which has previously been invited to demonstrate in Nanjing.

Bach says these will not be competitions but exhibitions meant to show participants at the games how these sports are played. The move is clearly a step in the direction of opening the door for new sports to one day enter the Olympics

Other issues such as the retirement age, more comprehensive changes to the Olympic bid process and recasting the way sports are chosen for the Olympics will have to wait for the IOC session scheduled for Sochi in early February. Bach plans to take as much as a day and a half of the three-day meeting to debate more changes such as those. In addition working groups will be formed in the months ahead to deal with specific questions.

In addition to covering details of the closed door brainstorm, Bach also revealed that one new IOC member will be proposed for election at the IOC session in Sochi. The nomination of Badminton World Federation president Poul-Erik Høyer was approved earlier this week when the Executive Board met in Lausanne for its regular meeting.

Written by Ed Hula.