The Olympic News Digest and International Inside Sports Newsletter Karl-Heinz Huba, Editor & Publisher Telephone: +49 - (0)6251- 96 230

Faksimile: +49 – (0) 6251–96 2323

E-Mail: ISMG@aol.com

Volume 45 – Issue 20130502 © Copyright 2013

INSIDE THE RINGS

JACQUES ROGGE:

“I sense that in the future the IOC President will necessarily move towards being executive chairman”

EXCLUSIVE: Retiring IOC President discusses with David Miller the logic behind appointing a salaried successor

Elaborating expansively on his controversial suggestion – that the IOC President should be full time and professional – Jacques Rogge considers it his duty to create the possibility before his retirement. With the onerous demands of a post that largely operates seven days a week, answerable to more than a hundred IOC Members and over 250 affiliated associations around the globe, he believes “it will be a strengthening of the job for all its responsibilities”.

At the same time, Rogge emphatically counters the suspicion that such a radical move would further reduce the influence of either the Executive Board, nor any the more that of run-of-the-mill members.

Not long before Rogge’s own election in 2001, I had joined him, with then President Samaranch on a tour of seven central Asian countries, in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Behind the urbane, relaxed manner was a medical consultant’s mind for detail. And Rogge reckons the President’s task is going to become more consuming than it already is.

“Any change is not going to affect me,” he says – financially comfortable in late middle age with all expenses covered, including his wife’s travel on many trips

– “but I think it important to raise the idea with the Executive Board: that my successor should receive a salary if he or she wishes that. It would not be mandatory, the successor would decide.

“Whether the EB will agree, I don’t know, but I sense that in the future the President will necessarily move towards being executive chairman. Other sports organisations already have salaried presidents.”

Regarding the warning, expressed by Phil Hersh in the Chicago Tribune, that the IOC should heed the adverse experience of USOC in professional promotion of in- house staff to executive roles, Rogge is undeterred. “I noted the comments ►►►