In 2014, the International Olympic Committee adopted an agenda of 40 reform items called the Olympic Agenda 2020. The IOC says it has achieved 85% of those recommendations.
The IOC says the big-picture goal of the recommendations was to “safeguard the Olympic values and strengthen the role of sport in society.” That comes from the IOC’s press release today.
Here are a few of the major items the IOC lists among the 85% achieved:
Hosting Bids
The IOC says it has reformed the bidding process for host cities by introducing Future Host Commissions. It says it has helped lower the budgets for host city candidates dramatically. The 2022 Winter Olympics included about $35 million (in U.S. Dollars) in average candidate budgets. The 2026 Winter Olympics decreased that average to just $5 million.
Olympic Cost Savings
The IOC cites several ways it’s worked to lower the financial burden on Olympic organizers, including:
- Maximizing the use of existing or temporary infrastructure.
- Reducing athlete quotas by about 1000 across all sports. (We covered that news here)
Achieving Gender Equality
2024 will be the first Olympic Games with completely equal numbers of male and female participants. The IOC has also added more mixed events to the Olympic Games, including the mixed medley relay in swimming.
Ramping Up Anti-Doping
The IOC contributes about $136 million across an Olympiad to fight doping, about half of the $260 million spent by the “Olympic movement” over that time-frame.
Other items:
- Adding a wider range of sports to the Olympics to make the Games “more urban, more youthful and more female,” according to the IOC. That includes skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing, karate, baseball and softball.
- Using the Youth Olympic Games as a test environment for more youthful and urban sports.
- Bringing the Youth Olympic Games to new host cities and nations, like Dakar, Senegal which will host in 2026.
- Offering athletes support programs for career transition and mental health.
- Working to prevent and expose corruption within sport, especially through the International Partnership Against Corruption in Sport, or IPACS.
- Becoming a carbon-neutral organization, with a commitment to being climate-positive by 2024.
