POSTED: September 28th 2011
NewsUpdate
German NOC celebrates 30th anniversary of Baden-Baden Olympic Congress
LAURA WALDEN / Sports Features Communications
TAMPA: The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) today celebrated the 30th anniversary of the XI Olympic Congress which was well remembered for the launch of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes’ Commission.
Three hundred guests were on hand for the ceremony today opened by IOC vice-president, Thomas Bach, which included IOC president Dr. Jacques Rogge, Hungarian President, Pal Schmitt, Prince Albert of Monaco, London 2012 chair, Lord Seb Coe, to name a few.
Also attending were Frank Fredericks, Chairman of the current Athletes’ Commission, Nadia Comaneci, Romania’s five-time Olympic gymnastics champion, and Kip Keino, Kenya’s two-time Olympic Champion, who held a panel discussion that was led by Olympian Franziska Schenk, a bronze medal-winning speed skater.
President Rogge outlined in his address some of the most important points of the Congress. The year before 60 NOCs were forced to join in a boycott of the Moscow Games, then in ’84 Los Angeles suffered another boycott. The financial situation of the Movement was unstable and there had only been one bidder for the ’84 Games.
Also at the time there was a wide divide between the more industrialized NOCs and the smaller countries and the scourge of doping was becoming an ever growing threat to the Games. And the real protagonists of the Games, the athletes, had no real voice in the administration.
Former President Juan Antonio Samaranch asked five time Olympian Peter Tallberg to lead the first Athletes’ Commission and Sebastian Coe and Thomas Bach were part of the founding members.
Tallberg said, “Samaranch’s decision to invite 38 active medal-winning athletes, of whom eight were women, to Baden-Baden was significant, and it was right – and this was repeatedly stated in the course of the congress.
“Headlines in the newspapers applauded the President´s visionary decision to include the athletes. It was considered to be a signal and an obligation of the IOC, the NOCs and IFs to finally include athletes in the Olympic family as full members.
“The athletes who had been invited to Baden-Baden understood the importance of their role and immediately realized that this was THE moment for them to show what an important, new and vital partner of the congress they represented.”
Bach added, “For the first time the grand arena of sports policy was opened to the athletes.
“We were allowed not only to be there but also to represent our interests explicitly. For us this was a challenge and an opportunity that I believe we were able to use.”
He mentioned a quote from Seb Coe that summed up the point, “I believe that by taking part in the Congress, and the tenacity we have shown in the way we approached our tasks, will clear up once and for all the widespread misconception that athletes are just robots incapable of thinking.”
Keywords · German NOC · Jacques Rogge · Thomas Bach · Pal Schmitt · Prince Albert of Monaco · Lord Seb Coe · Frank Fredericks · Nadia Comaneci · Kip Keino · Franziska Schenk
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