A new President for the Coordination Commission – Sport & Société

2023-07-03 05:58:32

Member of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Kristin Kloster Aasen will head the Coordination Commission for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games, replacing Sari Essayah who was recently appointed Minister at within the Finnish government.

Kristin Kloster Aasen, new President of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games Coordination Commission (Credits – IOC / Greg Martin)

Less than three years from the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the Coordination Commission responsible for supervising the preparations of the Italian organizers will experience a significant change in its composition.

Thus, the presidency of the Olympic body will pass from Sari Essayah to Kristin Kloster Aasen.

The first, who had been appointed to this position in November 2019, must indeed give way given her recent entry into the new government of Finland as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. The second, until then a member of the IOC Executive Board since 2021, is taking on the most important functions of her career within the Olympic institution, she who was for a time President of the Future Host Commission for the Olympic Games. summer (2019-2021).

A graduate in Political Science and History from the University of Minnesota (United States) at the dawn of the 1980s, Kristin Kloster Aasen then studied Criminology and Law at the University of Oslo (Norway).

Passionate about horse riding, which she has practiced at a high level, the Norwegian has settled in several bodies responsible for organizing or supporting the holding of equestrian events. Thus, she became a member of the administrative team in charge of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) Horse Show in Oslo in 1996, before becoming a member of the Board of Directors of the Norwegian Equestrian Federation a year later. (1997-1999), then Vice-President (1999-2003) before finally taking over as President (2003-2012).

Still in her country, and after having been a representative of the National Federations to the FEI’s Clean Sport Commission (2008-2009), Kristin Kloster Aasen distinguished herself as Second Vice-President (2011-2015), then as First Vice-President (2015-2019) of the National Olympic and Paralympic Committee of Norway.

A member of the Oslo Candidature Committee for the 2022 Winter Games, she joined the IOC in 2017.

In recent years, the Norwegian joined the Sustainability and Legacy Commission in 2018, when she also became a member of the Evaluation Commission for the 2026 Winter Games which reviewed competing projects for Milan-Cortina and Stockholm -Are.

Now a member of the powerful Executive Board, Kristin Kloster Aasen won the confidence of Thomas Bach, President of the IOC – and in fact of the Executive Commission – which thus appointed her to the presidency of the Coordination Commission.