The International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board has proposed a new strategic roadmap, the Olympic Agenda 2020+5, which includes 15 key recommendations. The IOC will vote on the Olympic Agenda at the IOC session in March.
The proposal takes its name from the “Olympic Agenda 2020,” which guided the organization for six years leading up to 2020. The new plan will govern the next five years, hence the “+5” addition to its title.
You can read about all 15 proposals in detail here.
Below are brief synopses of the 15 proposals:
- Strengthen uniqueness &universality of Olympics
- Foster sustainable Olympics
- Reinforce athletes tights & tesponsibilities
- Continue to attract best athletes
- Further strengthen safe sport and protection of clean athletes
- Enhance and promote the road to the Olympic Games
- Coordinate harmonisation of the sports calendar
- Grow digital engagement with people
- Encourage development of virtual sports and further engage with video gaming communities
- Strengthen role of sport as important enabler for UN Sustainable Development goals
- Strengthen support to refugees and populations affected by displacement
- Reach out beyond Olympic community
- Continue to lead by example in corporate citizenship
- Strengthen Olympic movement through good governance
- Innovate revenue generation models
A few are of particular interest to swimming, specifically. #3 calls for the establishment of an “Athletes’ Department” within IOC administration. Athlete rights and responsibilities will only become a more pressing issue in swimming with the launch of the International Swimmers Alliance, which plans to represent athletes in negotiations with governing bodies like the IOC.
Recommendation #4 commits to attracting the best athletes to the Olympics. That comes only a few years after FINA vaguely threatened to bar top swimmers from the Olympics for participating in a non-FINA event, the Energy For Swim 2018. That meet was organized by the leadership of the International Swimming League, and FINA and the ISL have continued to jockey for power within the sport in the years since.
That balance will also cross over into recommendation #7, which seeks to “coordinate the harmonisation” of sport event planning. The IOC says it “continues to discuss the ever-increasing congestion of the sports calendar” and plans to ensure that athletes have a voice in organizing sports calendars.
An oversight committee for the oversight committee that oversees the committee of oversight…because they are out of sight and far out. Out of control and in the shadows beyond the reach of the taxpaying citizens and not fit to benefit anyone except themselves.
The Hill We Climb Is Crime.
Fluff
Yes, ‘strengthen, encourage, foster, enhance’ basically means doing nothing….how can any of those things be measured?