SKhamil Tarpishchev comes to the first coffee break of the IOC session on Tuesday morning in good spirits. The sports official from Moscow, who became famous in the 1990s because he was able to rake in millions of rubles thanks to the so-called “vodka fund,” is the last remaining member of a once impressive Russian group in the International Olympic Committee. And although Russia’s national Olympic committee is officially suspended and the IOC has only admitted a dozen Russian athletes as “neutral athletes” at the Winter Games in Milan, he now seems quite pleased with the latest developments.
At the opening of the session the evening before, he says, he sat in the Scala in Milan next to Gianni Infantino, the president of the world football association Fifa, who also has a place in the IOC and who had just mused about the return of Russian football teams. And Tarpishchev was also impressed by the speech from IOC President Kirsty Coventry on Tuesday morning. The 42-year-old emphasized that they wanted to “keep sport as a neutral place where every athlete can compete freely without being hindered by politics.” Tarpishchev said it was still too early to talk about the timing of the return to Russia, and Coventry also recently stated that there was “no timetable” for this. But all developments suggest that this point in time is probably no longer that far away.
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The appearance at the Milan Convention Center was Kirsty Coventry’s first speech as president at an IOC session. And while in the days before she could be heard with almost child-like anticipation for the games, in addition to some classic Olympic phrases, she now also had two very clear messages ready. One concerned the Russia question – and the other was aimed primarily internally, at the Olympic movement. To the around 100 members of your IOC, but especially to the many presidents of world associations who are not in the IOC but are also present at the session.
Shortly after her election in March 2025, Coventry announced the “Fit for the Future” program, with which she wants to reposition the Olympic world and whose design the Olympic world has been discussing since then. And one of the most important questions, as Coventry said in Milan, was “the Olympic Games themselves and in particular the Olympic program”. You have to look at the sports, the disciplines and the events “with a fresh eye” – and that means that you have to find the right balance “between tradition and innovation, between stability and flexibility”. The discussions about this could become “uncomfortable but essential”.
So their second message was: Of the current 16 winter and 36 summer sports, some should no longer be sure that they will continue to be part of the Olympic program in the future. At least not in its current form and scope.
Why not include indoor sports in the Winter Games program?
In a way, this point is part of the Olympic routine. A place at the Olympics is a crucial issue for most sports because it ensures their respective financial survival. The IOC, in turn, has repeatedly adjusted its program for reasons of sports policy, sometimes for reasons of zeitgeist and sometimes with a view to the sporting preferences in the country of its Olympic hosts. This then led, for example, to (temporarily) baseball, lacrosse and breakdancing being added to the program.
But Coventry is now once again using this topic particularly strongly and fundamentally – although so far it has obviously been part of the strategy to leave the associations in the dark about exactly where they want to go. In the Olympic circles, this leads to widespread debate about the future status of individual sports. For example, it is also a question of whether the IOC rule will be repealed, according to which only sports that take place on snow or ice are permitted at the Winter Games. Couldn’t some indoor sports be moved from summer to winter? And wouldn’t taking up cross-country running give Africa’s athletes the chance to win medals at the Winter Games?
Coventry’s approach is, on the one hand, about making the games more attractive to the audience. At the same time, it can serve as a means of pressure in sports politics to bring associations into line on other issues. A first decision on the future direction is likely to be made at an extraordinary session of the IOC in June. Then Coventry wants to present the result of its “Fit for the Future” program – very similar to what its predecessor and sponsor Thomas Bach did a year after his election in 2013 when he launched the “Agenda 2020”. And given the current situation, it is a close race whether the concept of “Fit for the Future” comes first – or whether Russia’s return to world sport is a done deal first.
