The successor of Pierre-Olivier Beckers, president of the Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee (COIB) since December 2004, will be known on Friday evening following a simple majority vote to be held at the Auditorium du Passage 44 in Brussels. . Two former high-level athletes are candidates, the former world No. 1 in table tennis Jean-Michel Saive and the former judoka Heidi Rakers, bronze medalist at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992. If she wins, she would become the first woman to hold this position.Saive, 51, has been a member of the COIB’s board of directors since 2009 and one of its vice-presidents since 2017. Candidate declared for the presidency of the body since September 2020, he saw Heidi Brakels, 53, enter the dance shortly before the deadline. The table tennis player, who has participated in the Olympic Games for seven years, has a unique knowledge of the Olympic world which he has been able to deepen within several governing bodies, whether within the Executive Committee of the European Olympic Committees or as a current member of the Commission of the entourage of the athletes of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), to name just a few of its many functions. Jean-Michel Saive presented a program based on ten axes, including the creation of a commission of non-Olympic federations, the continuation of the Be Gold project to support promising young athletes or the promotion of Olympic values and the strengthening of role of the COIB / BPC task force to forge even more links with Paralympic athletes. Rakels, three medals at the European Championships, two silver (1992 and 2001) and one bronze (1999), also draws on his own experience as a medalist athlete and member of a high-level sports commission in judo. to increase their chances of success. A civilian computer engineer by training, the two-time Olympian (1992 and 2000) also draws on her entrepreneurial experience as CEO of Guardsquare, a software company for protecting mobile applications against hackers, which she founded in 2014 with her husband and who is now enjoying international success. Rakels places athletes at the center of its priorities. In particular, it wants to improve communication and cooperation between the various Belgian sports institutions. The candidate, who wants to increase the annual budget allocated to high-level sport by at least 10 million euros in five years, is also betting on an increase in high-level sports projects, whether in major sports but also in less famous disciplines, to increase the chances of medals. The 39 Olympic federations will have a double vote, unlike the 42 non-Olympic federations and the four individual members (Pierre-Olivier Beckers, Ingmar De Vos, Tom Goegebuer and Jill Boon). In addition to the vote on the presidency, that of the board of directors is also on the program. (Belga)
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