International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach (71, Germany) will step down on June 23. The International Olympic Committee announced on the 26th local time that the Executive Board will decide to accept President Bach's resignation as a member of the IOC on June 23. As a result, the date for the new IOC President, who will be elected at the General Meeting in Greece on 20 March, to take over his post is also set for 23 June.

IOC President Thomas Bach

Bach, a 1976 gold medallist in fencing at Montreal Olympics, retired as a lawyer, became a member of the IOC in 1991 and was elected to the IOC presidency in September 2013. He was then re-elected in March 2021 for a total of 12 years. The term of office of the IOC President is 8 years, which can be extended for a further 4 years.

It is reported that Chairman Bach has been considering the request of the surrounding members to urge the Olympic Charter to be amended in order to extend the term of office, but he said at the IOC conference in Paris, France in August last year: "The rules will not be changed in order to extend the term." ”

The IOC said President Bach submitted his resignation to the Executive Board this week. In the elections in which President Bach's successor contested in March, a total of seven candidates challenged. At the same time, the IOC Executive Board also decided to temporarily recognize World Boxing (WB) as the international federation that administers boxing events within the Olympic system.

The International Boxing Federation (IBA), the body that has been in charge of amateur boxing around the world, was expelled by the IOC for reasons such as financial opacity, biased judgment, and unethical group operations. At Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, the IOC operated boxing as its own temporary body and has been working on the newly formed WB. The IOC said it would exclude boxing from the official Olympic programme if an international alternative to the IBA could not be established by this year.

The IOC explained that the WB is made up of 78 national associations on 5 continents, and 4 continental federations have been formed, which in many respects meet the standards of the International Federations (IFs). It is reported that the Korean Boxing Association also withdrew from the IBA in July last year and joined the WB.