2024-04-28 05:46:03
Summer Olympics moved to the fall? Athletes “augmented” by artificial intelligence? E-sport games (competitive video games)? All these scenarios seem plausible to the head of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, as environment and technologies also shape world sport.
“Never have we encountered so much interest in hosting the Games 12, sometimes 16 years in advance,” rejoiced the head of the Olympics in an interview with AFP.
With the 2026 Olympic Games entrusted to Milan-Cortina, those of 2032 to Brisbane, while the 2030 and 2034 editions will be awarded in July to the French Alps and Salt Lake City, the Lausanne body has ensured the future of the largest sporting event in the world for 10 years, only in Western countries.
And after? The candidate countries have replaced public campaigns with a confidential “dialogue” with the IOC, “but we already have a double-digit number of cities and regions interested for 2036 and 2040,” assured the German leader.
Thomas Bach did not want to comment on the ambitions of the two Gulf sporting powers. Saudi Arabia is the only candidate to host the 2034 World Cup. Qatar, furious at the awarding of the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane at its expense, is preparing to apply for those of 2036, the Qatari newspaper reported on Saturday Al-Watan.
Summer in autumn
But he believes he has stopped the candidacy crisis thanks to the reforms of his “Agenda 2020”, adopted in 2014, which aimed to reduce costs and improve the impact of the Olympics by favoring the reuse of existing installations and by capping at around 10,500 the number of athletes.
By containing the growth of the Games, the IOC is opting for a strategy opposite to that of FIFA, which will transform its men’s World Cup into a 48-team mega-tournament from the 2026 edition in the United States, Mexico and Canada, and will organize that of 2030 between six countries and three continents.
The fact remains that global warming is constraining the Olympic body even more than its football counterpart: only 10 countries will still be able to host the Winter Games by 2040, recalled Thomas Bach, pushing the IOC to consider “a rotation” between sites.
High temperatures can also disrupt the Summer Games – for example forcing the marathon to be moved to Sapporo during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and then kicking off at dawn – and should ultimately change the “the entire international sports calendar,” predicts the head of the Olympics.
“You will see the growing importance of the southern hemisphere” – where the Summer Games fall during the southern winter – “and of the eastern part of the world”, anticipates the leader, who also imagines the Olympics being moved “to the ‘autumn’, as was the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar.
AI-backed doping?
But organizing the Olympic Games is not the only challenge for the IOC, which has established itself as the chief regulator of the sporting world, largely financing the fight against doping and the international federations while issuing ethical or medical recommendations.
For Thomas Bach, it is now artificial intelligence that the authorities must seize, because it “will determine the future of our societies and greatly influence sport in many aspects”.
The “AI Agenda” launched last week by the organization plans to help “identify talent” and “close the gap between athletes who have at their disposal” the best training, nutrition and health programs. medical follow-up, with powerful sponsors, and others, explains the 70-year-old German.
But artificial intelligence can also have a darker side: “I’m not a prophet, but when we look at the combination of AI and biochemistry, we can come to a rather dystopian conclusion about what […] These two scientific developments can help improve performance,” he warned.
For the manager, however, there is no question of mixing e-sport – which experienced its first “Olympic week” in Singapore in June 2023 – with traditional sports: “I don’t think you will see an e-sport event in the Olympic Games, but you may see e-sport Games very soon,” he announced.
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