Juan Antonio Samaranch, candidate to preside over the International Olympic Committee

Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs is one of the seven candidates to replace German Thomas Bach at the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), whose new president will be elected next March.

The Catalan director is the son of Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was the top leader of the Olympic Movement between 1980 and 2001, and now aspires to put this surname back at the head of an organisation of which he has been a member since 2001, being first vice president from 2016 to 2020, a position he held again since 2022.

Samaranch is also a member of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) and has been the first vice-president of the International Union of Modern Pentathlon (UIPM) since 1996. As he turns 65 next November, if elected he could serve a maximum of two terms, since for the second term, which would end in 2033, he would already be over the age limit of 70 years that the IOC has imposed on its members.

The Spaniard will have tough rivals for this post, such as the president of World Athletics, the Englishman Sebastian Coe, double Olympic champion in the 1,500 metres, or the former Zimbabwean swimmer Kirsty Coventry, a multiple Olympic medallist who has also been a member of an organisation for many years, and who hopes to be the first woman to preside.

The list of candidates also includes the names of Frenchman David Lappartient, president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, and the Swede Johan Eliasch and the Japanese Morinari Watanabe, current leaders of the International Ski and Gymnastics Federations, respectively.

“The candidates will present their programmes behind closed doors to all IOC members at a meeting to be held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in January 2025,” the International Olympic Committee said.