SportAccord row: IOC emerges as clear winners
Vizer had accused the IOC of lacking transparency and blocking new events. PHOTO: REUTERS
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has emerged as the clear winner in a battle for influence over international sports federations as rival organisation SportAccord has been left in tatters.
A rare public confrontation that began last month with a scathing attack by SportAccord President Marius Vizer on the IOC has essentially ended with the complete isolation of SportAccord, an umbrella organisation for some 100 sports federations.
Dozens of them, including most Olympic federations, have either withdrawn their membership of SportAccord or made their opposition to Vizer’s comments public, siding with the IOC.
Vizer had accused the IOC of lacking transparency and blocking new events, calling their system “expired, outdated, wrong, unfair and not at all transparent.”
Even after Vizer proposed a meeting with the IOC to clear the air with a 20-point agenda that included major demands in favour of his members, federations continued to drop out of SportAccord en masse.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 27th, 2015.