COSTA NAVARINO, Greece (AP) — An in tray of Olympic challenges spanning political, social, sporting and operational issues awaits the next IOC president who will be elected Thursday.
Seven candidates are competing in the first contested International Olympic Committee election since 2013 to replace Thomas Bach, who formally leaves office in June after the mandated maximum of 12 years.
They include two Olympic gold medalists, Sebastian Coe and Kirsty Coventry, and the son of a former IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch.
Four are presidents of Olympic sports bodies, including Johan Eliasch from skiing, David Lappartient from cycling, and Morinari Watanabe from gymnastics. Coe also leads track's World Athletics, organized the 2012 London Olympics and is widely viewed as the most qualified candidate.
Three are members of the Bach-chaired IOC executive board that meets Monday: Samaranch, Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan and Coventry, the sports minister of Zimbabwe who would be the first woman leader in the IOC's 131-year history.
Coventry is seen as Bach’s preferred choice to be elected by about 100 IOC members invited into an exclusive club from royal families, international politics and business, sports officials plus past and current athletes.
Here's a look at some of the issues facing them:
The Summer Games is the foundation of the Olympic movement, where each of the 207 officially recognized teams competes. Fewer than 100 countries participate at the Winter Games.
For the IOC, bringing the world’s athletes together in the Olympic village is a powerful symbol of political neutrality and promoting peace.
The next Summer Games is in Los Angeles in 2028, in the final months of President Donald Trump's second term. As the host nation head of state, he should help formally open the games at a July 14 ceremony likely drawing the biggest global audience for any broadcast in 2028.
A challenge until then is protecting what the IOC calls Olympic values, including gender equality and universal inclusion.
American relations this year with long-time allies like Canada, Ukraine, Denmark and Germany has cast doubt on how much warmth there will be for the U.S. as a welcoming host in 2028.
The federal government’s limited operational role for the Olympics includes security and border issues, including visas. A test of those plans will be the U.S. co-hosting the 2026 World Cup in men’s soccer with Canada and Mexico. Iran should be among the first teams to qualify next week.
The next IOC president will need nimble diplomatic skills, balanced with close ties to the Democratic-leaning local organizing committee, city of LA and state of California.
The IOC has been closely aligned with the United Nations and the multilateral rules-based order shaping the world for 80 years. That is under pressure, from the U.S. and elsewhere. When and how to reintegrate Russia in the Olympic family is pressing.
If these can seem uniquely challenging times, Coe noted his career as a track champion at Moscow in 1980 and LA in 1984 was an Olympic era of Cold War boycotts and exclusion for apartheid-era South Africa.
“They always have been (navigable) in the past,” Coe said of the pending diplomatic turmoil.
Gender equality has been a key policy of the Bach presidency: Equal quotas of men and women athletes, higher profile scheduling of women’s events, men and women flag bearers for each team, more women members of the IOC.
Coventry is just the second female presidential candidate in the IOC’s 131-year history and the first with a chance to win.
Gender eligibility in Olympic sports is now a hot-button issue, fueled further by President Trump’s executive order on transgender athletes in the U.S. and promises to pressure the IOC, and coming after the furor and disinformation around women’s boxing in Paris last year.
The IOC had some responsibility for women’s boxing arriving in Paris with what seemed outdated eligibility rules. Those could be reviewed before 2028.
Stricter rules on transgender athletes — barring from women’s events anyone who went through male puberty — already were passed before Paris by swimming, cycling led by Lappartient and track and field led by Coe.
Some candidates in Thursday's election, including Coe, Samaranch and Eliasch have urged the IOC to take a clearer policy lead.
The new president’s eight-year mandate runs through 2033 and all games hosts in that time are already picked. Even 2034 is decided for the Salt Lake City Winter Games and 2038 looks destined for Switzerland.
The next big decision is the 2036 Summer Games with high-level lobbying under way by countries like India and Qatar. Doha would perhaps anchor a regional project with neighboring Gulf states.
There is no set timetable for a decision in the new, flexible and more opaque process designed by Bach which largely cuts members out of decisions, but limits the risk of vote-buying.
The 2036 Olympics seem likely to move from the July-August period the Summer Games has occupied since the 2004 Athens Olympics.
It can be a catalyst for a wide review of the global sports calendar amid rising temperatures and extreme weather.
With fewer options to find Winter Games hosts, Eliasch proposes in his manifesto to rotate among a select group of permanent venues.
Olympic athletes could be winners in the election.
Coe’s World Athletics broke an IOC taboo by paying $50,000 to track and field gold medalists in Paris, and promises payments for silver and bronze in LA.
Samaranch wants to give athletes control of video of their Olympic performances currently denied to protect broadcasters’ exclusivity. Athletes have long objected to the strict drafting of Olympic Charter Rule 40 that limits their commercial options at the games.
Coventry is the most recent Olympic athlete, swimming at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games, and was their representative on the IOC executive board from 2018-21. Her manifesto offers no new benefits but supports the established Athlete 365 program helping prepare for their next careers.
A theme for some candidates is that voters Thursday want more input and active involvement in the IOC’s work. Bach’s management style is widely seen as controlling.
Lappartient called for more debating instead of just listening; Coe said “I don’t micro-manage"; Prince Feisal suggested unanimous votes that are routine “means there’s something wrong.”
Samaranch offers members more say in selecting Olympic hosts. The members' age limit could rise five years to 75. Coe even would let members vote in just four years, not eight, whether to re-elect him.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
FILE - International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, left, and IOC member and former swimmer Kirsty Coventry, right, speak during a press conference after the executive board meeting of the IOC, at the Olympic House, in Lausanne, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020. (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Sebastian Coe speaks during a press conference following a presentation before their fellow IOC members in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Jan 30, 2025 (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - IOC President Thomas Bach, left, talks with former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch while touring the Olympic Village ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, July 22, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/David Goldman, Pool, File)
A federal judge on Monday questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador in possible violation of an decision he'd issued minutes before.
District Judge James E. Boasberg was incredulous over the administration's contentions that his verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed, that it couldn't apply to flights outside the U.S. and that they could not answer his questions about the trips due to national security issues.
“That's one heck of a stretch, I think,” Boasberg replied, noting that the administration knew as the planes were departing that he was holding a hearing on whether to briefly halt deportations being made under a rarely used 18th century law invoked by Trump about an hour earlier.
“I’m just asking how you think my equitable powers do not attach to a plane that has departed the U.S., even if it’s in international airspace,” Boasberg added at another point.
Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli contended that only Boasberg’s short written order, issued about 45 minutes after he made the verbal demand, counted. It did not contain any demands to reverse planes, and Kambly added that it was too late to redirect two planes that had left the U.S. by that time.
“These are sensitive, operational tasks of national security,” Kambli said.
The hearing over what Boasberg called the “possible defiance” of his court order marked the latest step in a high-stakes legal fight that began when President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 wartime law to remove immigrants over the weekend. It was also an escalation in the battle over whether the Trump administration is flouting court orders that have blocked some of his aggressive moves in the opening weeks of his second term.
“There’s been a lot of talk about constitutional crisis, people throw that word around. I think we’re getting very close to it,” warned Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, during the Monday hearing. After the hearing, Gelernt said the ACLU would ask Boasberg to order all improperly deported people returned to the United States.
Boasberg said he'd record the proceedings and additional demands in writing. “I will memorialize this in a written order since apparently my oral orders don’t seem to carry much weight,” Boasberg said.
On Saturday night, Boasberg ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody over the newly-invoked Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the law was newly in effect due to what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Trump's invocation of the act could allow him to deport any noncitizen he says is associated with the gang, without offering proof or even publicly identifying them. The plaintiffs filed their suit on behalf of several Venezuelans in U.S. custody who feared they'd be falsely accused of being Tren de Aragua members and improperly removed from the country.
Told there were planes in the air headed to El Salvador, which has agreed to house deported migrants in a notorious prison, Boasberg said Saturday evening that he and the government needed to move fast. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told the government's lawyer.
According to the filing, two planes that had taken off from Texas' detention facility when the hearing started more than an hour earlier were in the air at that point, and they apparently continued to El Salvador. A third plane apparently took off after the hearing and Boasberg's written order was formally published at 7:26 p.m. Eastern time. Kambli said that plane held no one deported under the Alien Enemies Act.
El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, on Sunday morning tweeted, “Oopsie...too late" above an article referencing Boasberg's order and announced that more than 200 deportees had arrived in his country. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, reposted Bukele's post with an admiring GIF.
Later Sunday, a widely circulated article in Axios said the administration decided to “defy” the order and quoted anonymous officials who said they concluded it didn't extend to planes outside U.S. airspace. That drew a quick denial from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said in a statement “the administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.”
Leavitt also stated the administration believed the order was not “lawful” and it was being appealed. The administration argues a federal judge does not have the authority to tell the president whether he can determine the country is being invaded under the act, or how to defend it.
The Department of Justice also filed a statement in the lawsuit saying that some people who were “not in United States territory” at the time of the order had been deported and that, if its appeal was unsuccessful, it wouldn't use Trump's proclamation as grounds for further deportations.
After Boasberg scheduled a hearing Monday and said the government should be prepared to answer questions over its conduct, the Justice Department objected, saying it could not answer in a public forum because it involved “sensitive questions of national security, foreign relations, and coordination with foreign nations.” Boasberg denied the government's request to cancel the hearing, which led the Trump administration to ask that the judge be taken off the case.
Kambli stressed that the government believes it is complying with Boasberg's order. It has said in writing it will not use Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport anyone if Boasberg's order is not overturned on appeal, a pledge Kambli made again verbally in court Monday. "None of this is necessary because we did comply with the court’s written order,” Kambli said.
Boasberg's temporary restraining order is only in effect for up to 14 days as he oversees the litigation over Trump's unprecedented use of the act, which is likely to raise new constitutional issues that can only ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. He had scheduled a hearing Friday for further arguments, but the two organizations that filed the initial lawsuit, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, urged him to force the administration to explain in a declaration under oath what happened.
The government's statements, the plaintiffs wrote, “strongly suggests that the government has chosen to treat this Court’s Order as applying only to individuals still on U.S. soil or on flights that had yet to clear U.S. airspace as of 7:26pm (the time of the written Order).”
“If that is how the government proceeded, it was a blatant violation of the Court’s Order,” they added.
As the courtroom drama built, so did international fallout over the deportations to El Salvador. Venezuela’s government on Monday characterized the transfer of migrants to El Salvador as “kidnappings” that it plans to challenge as “crimes against humanity” before the United Nations and other international organizations. It also accused the Central American nation of profiting off the plights of Venezuelan migrants.
“They are not detaining them, they are kidnapping them and expelling them,” Jorge Rodriguez, President Nicolas Maduro’s chief negotiator with the U.S., told reporters Monday.
Trump's proclamation alleges Tren de Aragua is acting as a “hybrid criminal state” in partnership with Venezuela.
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Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Michael Kunzelman in Washington, D.C., and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks along the southern border with Mexico, on Aug. 22, 2024, in Sierra Vista, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)
In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)
