BUENOS AIRES — Thomas Bach achieved a long-held dream Tuesday as he was elected to the most powerful position in sport, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in Buenos Aires. The 59-year-old German — the first Olympic gold medalist (fencing) to become president — won in the second round of voting by his fellow IOC members to beat his five male rivals bidding to succeed Jacques Rogge, who stepped down after 12 years in charge. Bach polled 49 votes in the second round to achieve the majority, with only Puerto Rican banker Richard Carrion getting into double figures with a respectable 29. Athletics legend Sergey Bubka was humiliated as he garnered just four votes — although he made the second round which was not the case for Taiwan's Wu Ching-kuo who was eliminated. The German is only the ninth president in the body's 119-year history. All but one of its leaders have been Europeans, with Avery Brundage of the United States the only outsider to break the monopoly, heading the IOC from 1952-1972. Bach, gold medalist with the West German team in the team foil event in the 1976 Olympics, had been the frontrunner throughout the campaign and had for years been seen as the man most likely to replace Rogge. “I know what the enormous responsibilities are of being IOC president but I am very happy,” he said after the announcement, which saw him break into a broad smile. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You my friends and colleagues have placed in me an overwhelming sign of trust. “I also have enormous respect for my fellow candidates and I will work with you. I will put into practice what my motto was during the campaign: ‘unity in diversity'.” Bach said that being in Buenos Aires brought memories flooding back from when he was an athlete. “I came here with the team a year after winning Olympic gold,” he said. “Then it was a cold winter but all I take from it is the warmth of the relations we enjoyed with our rivals even in a dramatic final where we came back from nowhere to win. “So I take those same warm feelings from the win today.” Bach, a lawyer by profession, is the ultimate insider having been a member since 1991 and has been vice president three times while also heading up the Judicial Commission. He has also been one of the leaders in fighting doping, calling for athletes to be suspended for four years instead of the two-year ban in place at the moment. Probst becomes 4th US IOC member The head of the US Olympic Committee has been elected to the IOC, a big boost for American efforts to regain influence on the international Olympic stage. USOC President Larry Probst made it onto the International Olympic Committee Tuesday with 71 votes in favor and 20 against. Probst, chairman of video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc., becomes the fourth US member on the IOC, joining Anita DeFrantz, Jim Easton and Angela Ruggiero. The president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Alexander Zhukov, also won a place on the IOC but with more negative votes in the secret balloting than Probst. The count was 63-29, with two abstentions. — Agencies
