International Olympics Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and President-elect Trump will be tasked with working together for the first Summer Olympics in the U.S. since the Atlanta games in 1996. Bach previously suggested concern about working with Trump after an infamous exchange in 2017.
But Bach praised Trump on Thursday when he revealed their first interactions since Trump won the election.
“We are very confident there with regard to the steps and efforts being undertaken,” Bach said at a news conference after an executive board meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland. “We saw also that President-elect Trump repeatedly declared his support for the games, which we never had any doubt because he has declared this support from the very beginning.”
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Former President Trump arrives to speak at an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Bach added that organizing committee officials in LA, and leaders of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) will be responsible for “taking early contact with the incoming team” of the Trump administration as they plan for LA 2028.
Bach also said that Olympics leaders are “very confident and relaxed” about working with Trump.
Trump and Bach last met in June 2017 at the White House when discussing a bid to bring the Olympics back to Los Angeles. Trump has taken credit for securing the 2028 bid. However, Bach did not speak flatteringly of Trump after that first meeting.
“Pray for our world,” Bach was heard to say on a cellphone call later that day in Washington, D.C.
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IOC President Thomas Bach attends the Artistic Gymnastics Women’s All-Around Final on day six of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on August 1, 2024, in Paris, France. (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
Still, the agreement for the U.S. to win the 2028 bid for Los Angeles was made. At the time, very few expected that Trump would be president in 2028, even if he were to win re-election in 2020.
But after an unprecedented political comeback, Trump will now preside over the Olympic Games that he helped secure the bid for. Bach will now spend the remainder of his term working to ensure that it will go as well as possible with Trump at the helm. Bach is set to leave office after 2025.
Until then, Bach and Trump stand ideologically opposed on one of the biggest issues and controversies that overshadowed the recent summer games in Paris.
Trump has pledged to ban trans athletes in women’s sports as part of his presidency, and he spoke out against the inclusion of boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting. Both of those boxers had failed gender-eligibility tests for previous international competitions.
Bach himself defended both Khelif and Yu-ting’s participation en-route to their gold medals as well as the IOC.
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Imane Khelif (r) from Algeria and Luca Anna Hamori from Hungary fight each other. (Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
But at least one of Bach’s potential successors aligns with Trump on the issue.
Former British Olympic gold medal distance runner Sebastian Coe, who is running to succeed Bach, promised to introduce an “uncompromising and clearcut” policy to protect women’s sports if he is elected president in the March election.
The United Nations says nearly 900 biological females have fallen short of the podium because they have been beaten out by trans athletes.
The study, titled “Violence against women and girls in sports,” said that more than 600 athletes have not medaled in more than 400 competitions in 29 different sports, totaling over 890 medals, according to information obtained up to March 30.
“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males,” the report said.
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