The Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is set to meet on March 19 and 20, in Lausanne, Switzerland, to deliberate on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In an interview with Le Monde, Thomas Bach, the IOC's president, discusses this subject, a few months after Vladimir Putin attacked the IOC in October 2023, claiming that the its attitude towards his country's athletes amounted to "ethnic discrimination."
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
With four months to go before the Paris 2024 Olympics Games kick off, are you confident about the French organizing committee's efforts?
I'm more than confident. I think [there has been] great anticipation with regard to the organizing committee. We are in a world of aggression, of hate, of confrontation. You feel in all your conversations that in the hearts of the people – whether you speak to a head of state, whether you speak to somebody on the street or to a friend – the people are looking for something positive, for a signal of hope, and, there, I think this very much focused on the Games.
In France, the high price of tickets for the opening ceremony or certain events has been the subject of much criticism. Are the Games reserved for a privileged audience?
They are clearly not. If you compare the ticket prices of [the 2024 Olympics in] Paris with the ticket prices in London in 2012, then you're about at the same average prices. And if you take inflation into account, then they're even below this average. A million tickets are only €24, fifty percent of tickets are under €50, and 90% are under €200... It's not for the privileged at all. And if you want to have a balanced budget, you cannot offer free access.
Do you think that swimming in the Seine will remain a legacy of the Paris Games?
It would be a huge legacy – after, I think, 200 years – for the Seine to be open again. We just had the first review of my agenda for Paris, and I've insisted already that I will be at the men's triathlon event [on July 30], for the start at – what is not normally my time – 8 in the morning, because this would be the first swimming event in the Seine during the Games.
I was speaking with the mayor of Ile-Saint-Denis [Mohamed Gnabaly is the mayor of this northern suburb of Paris] a couple of months ago, and he told me what this means for his community, when afterwards they can open [the banks of the Seine up] for the public. You would have more than 200 small beaches or exercise [areas] along the riverside. And that's quite something!
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