AIMS Congratulates IOC President Thomas Bach for Re-Election

Thomas Bach, a true Olympic champion with the German ‘Foil’ fencing team at the Olympic Games in Montreal 1976, was elected at the IOC session in 2013 in Buenos Aires for the first 8 year term. This term will finish on the closing day of the Olympic Games in Tokyo on the 8th of August. The 137th IOC session which was held virtually re-elected Thomas Bach for another 4 year term which will conclude in 2025.

Thomas Bach is an Olympian at heart, not only an Olympic Gold medal winner but also a 2 time World Champion in Montreal 1976 and Buenos Aires 1977. A founding member of the IOC Athletes Commission in 1981. He became an IOC member in 1991, serving many years as IOC vice president before he became president in September 2013. He initiated the Olympic Agenda 2020, and made important reforms for all the Olympic movement in 2014. The IOC session approved the closing report of the Olympic Agenda 2020, unanimously everyone agreed.

The Olympic Agenda 2020 has changed the Olympic Games, the Olympic movement and the IOC. In his acceptance speech president Bach said, “we learnt during the corona crisis the hard way that we can live up to our Olympic slogan: faster, higher, stronger, in sport and in life only if we are working together in solidarity.” He suggested in a discussion with the Olympic community on whether to compliment this slogan by adding after a hyphen, the word ‘together’, making it: ‘faster, higher, stronger – together’. When Thomas Bach became president in 2013, he stated he wanted to lead the IOC to his campaign moto: ‘unity and diversity to be a president for all and all stakeholders’.

The AIMS family thanks president Bach as it was him who opened the door for all AIMS members, inviting them to the IOC headquarters. Supporting us for provisional recognition in 2016 until full recognition at the IOC session in 2020. AIMS president, Stephan Fox who attended the session, sent his heartful congratulations to the IOC president on his re-election on being a president for everyone.

We are looking forward to a continued cooperation, putting the athletes and the youth at the centre of our work. The Olympic movement could not have a more visionary and truer president for sport.