IOC President Bach runs unopposed to stay on until 2025

(FILES) In this file photo taken on January 10, 2020, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach attends a press conference in Lausanne. – Bach will stand unopposed to serve a second term as International Olympic Committee president, the body said on December 1, 2020. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

BERLIN —International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach is set to remain in office until 2025 as he will run unopposed next year for a second term, the IOC said on Tuesday.

Bach succeeded outgoing president Jacques Rogge in 2013 after prevailing over five other candidates in an election in Buenos Aires.

Presidents are limited to two terms in office under the rules of the Olympic body. The length of the first presidential term is eight years with re-election securing another four years in office.

“The members of the IOC were informed today… that President Thomas Bach will be the only candidate for the presidential election, which will be held during the 137th IOC Session in Athens in March 2021,” it said in a statement.

Bach is a German lawyer who won a gold medal in fencing at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

An IOC member since 1991, he introduced a string of reforms in 2014 designed to reduce the cost and size of the Olympics, as potential host cities were scared away by the financial implications.

He also had to deal with the fallout of the 2014 Sochi Olympics doping scandal that led to the Olympic ban of Russia in 2018, and more recently had to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has also ruled the IOC virtually unopposed, with the vast majority of decisions receiving unanimous support from the committee members, who currently number just over 100.

More than half of them became members during Bach’s presidency.