IOC candidate Samaranch sees diplomacy with Trump as key priority ahead of 2028 LA Olympics

GENEVA (AP) — Meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump should be high on the agenda of the next IOC leader, according to a strong candidate to win the Olympic body’s presidential election next week.

“It has to be a priority,” International Olympic Committee vice president Juan Antonio Samaranch told The Associated Press in an interview. “The United States is today one of the most, if not the most, important partner.”

The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will be one of the defining events for whoever wins the eight-year IOC leadership term on Thursday. Seven candidates are competing for votes from about 100 other IOC members at a meeting near Ancient Olympia in Greece.

“I take very seriously what President Trump has said publicly that he has three major highlights in his coming presidency,” Samaranch told the AP, referring to the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence on July 4th next year, during the 2026 World Cup in men’s soccer, plus the LA Summer Games.

The men's World Cup and the Summer Olympics are the two biggest events in world sports. The host nation’s head of state has a formal role at the Olympic opening ceremony and traditionally presents the golden World Cup trophy to the winning captain. The World Cup final will be played at MetLife Stadium near New York, though the tournament is being co-hosted with Canada and Mexico — a currently complicated alliance.

Both the Olympics and World Cup guarantee a global audience of hundreds of millions viewers and present themselves as inclusive, unifying celebrations of all teams, athletes and fans.

“America loves sports, America loves the Olympics,” said Samaranch, a Spanish financier who studied, worked and was married in New York. “It’s an incredible opportunity for the United States to demonstrate who they are to the world.”

Athletes from all 206 national Olympic nations should be invited to Los Angeles, including from a growing list of countries President Trump has challenged or slighted in his second term. A Palestinian team also should be there and an officially recognized team of refugees.

Samaranch said he has faith in the uniting power of the Olympics and the IOC, which his father, Juan Antonio Samaranch Sr. led as president from 1980 to 2001.

“We are a beam of hope for humanity, that is how I feel,” he said. “We were very much alone before President Donald Trump took office. Our message is more powerful than ever.”

With diplomatic skills likely needed from the next IOC president, Samaranch’s life has spanned the political spectrum: growing up in Franco’s Spain, experiencing Soviet Russia, working in 1980s finance in the U.S. and well connected in modern China.

“I am able to feel comfortable not to judge in so many different environments,” he said, adding the IOC needs to be neutral. “If we lean toward one particular way of life, western or eastern, or North American — game over.”

“We as an institution have to make sure that the youngsters that live in every single different country and political system, they have a common house to go to.”

IOC allied with the UN

The geopolitical world has its own common house — the United Nations — which the IOC has closely aligned with during Bach’s 12-year presidency, including declaring that Russia breached the Olympic Truce in February 2022 by invading Ukraine.

“The UN probably is not perfect but it’s the best that we have in the world for all the countries to sit together and discuss issues of common importance,” Samaranch said.

He led the IOC panel overseeing the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, held in a strict lockdown after working with the World Health Organization following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The IOC has had a working agreement with WHO since 1984 under Samaranch’s father. The Trump administration has paused funding for the Geneva-based WHO and intends to withdraw from the UN agency.

“I am all for an international health organization, the world needs one,” Samaranch said. “It helped us extremely in our quest to being able to deliver very good games in Beijing in 2022.”

Giving athletes image rights

One of Samaranch's manifesto pledges is to relax a rule in order to start letting athletes use footage of their Olympic performances on social media.

“Before writing that I checked, it’s easy,” Samaranch said. “We did not do it because we fear the broadcasting partners would feel threatened.”

“But if Simone Biles or any top athlete does that kind of promotion, the ratings will be higher. It is good for them and good for us. It’s a no-brainer.”

Transgender rights

There is broad consensus among the IOC candidates to protect women's sports. Track and field's governing body led by one of Samaranch's opponents, Sebastian Coe, already excluded from international women's events any athlete who went through male puberty.

World Athletics is now preparing tighter rules on gender eligibility that also align more with President Trump's executive order seeking to stop transgender athletes playing sport at any level in the U.S.

Samaranch has a more nuanced position, wanting to protect the right to play sport: “Transgender people are human beings with the same rights that you and I have.”

He also suggests needing rules in higher-level sports because "they cannot compete if they have an undue advantage. That would destroy 100 years of women's sports.”

Billion-dollar donor program

Another manifesto aim is creating a donor program to support the IOC’s work.

“There are people that are willing to give tens of millions of dollars in exchange for respect, association with the brand and maybe hospitality during the games,” Samaranch said. “We would double our reserves with $1 billion.”

“With one billion 20 years ago, we were rich. With one billion dollars today, we are not rich. Sorry,” he said. “We are not greedy but we need to generate as much as we can.”

___

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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