LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Seven International Olympic Committee members are running as candidates to be the next president in its first election since 2013.
Their newly published manifestos show broad consensus on some issues and challenges for the IOC and global sports: Climate change and sustainability, engaging with youth via social and digital media in the fast-changing broadcasting landscape, harnessing AI, protecting women's sport.
There are clear differences in whether to pay prize money to Olympic athletes and how to engage more than 100 members — their voters at a March 18-21 election meeting in Greece — in shaping the IOC's future and picking host cities.
The winner will succeed Thomas Bach, whose executive-style presidency formally ends on Olympic Day, June 23, after a three-month transition period.
The two-time men’s 1,500-meters gold medalist represents the biggest challenge to the Olympic establishment though insists: “This is not a broken movement. It has,” he suggests, “to reset around sport.”
Running track and field’s governing body, Coe has paid prize money to Olympic champions, been tough on doping and promoted fairness in women’s track and field. He promises to “advocate for clear, science-based policies that safeguard the female category.”
He says IOC voters have told him “decision-making is overly centralized” and pledges “rebalancing of the roles and responsibilities,” while giving athletes “meaningful” input in decisions. “I am good at building teams. I don’t micro-manage,” he says, using a label others have put on IOC president Thomas Bach.
At age 68, Coe is nearing the IOC’s retirement age of 70 and would need an exemption to stay in office. He promises to seek re-election after four years – half of the statutory first mandate of eight years. His 22-page document is published only in English.
A 24-page document with much aspirational rhetoric though few details positions her having “deep insight into IOC policies.”
Seen as Bach’s preferred candidate, she pushes for strengthening established IOC policies, like the scholarship program that directs money to athletes and the 206 national Olympic bodies, and empowering the IOC Commissions. They are the panels of members and sports officials closely guided by the 700-strong IOC administration.
The two-time swimming gold medalist and sports minister in Zimbabwe’s government would be the first woman to lead the IOC, aged just 41, and the first African. “My mission to drive empowerment, strengthen engagement, and ensure we remain relevant, is guided by the Ubuntu philosophy: ‘I am because we are.’”
An IOC member only since July, Eliasch cites his decades of leadership experience in sports, business — owning the tennis and ski brand Head — politics and philanthropy. His stated business philosophy is “1+1=3” and encouraging all members to submit ideas. This is “no time for a novice,” he writes, and believes Bach’s “exemplary” leadership of the IOC on geopolitical issues were worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
Eliasch opposes the IOC paying prize money to athletes, wants it to shape gender policy “ensuring that only those who were born female can compete in women’s sport,” and promote more “star-powered entertainment” features throughout the Olympic Games not just at opening and closing ceremonies.
A long-time environmentalist, Eliasch proposes rotating the Winter Games among a group of permanent venues, and conserving a rain forest area of the exact size of each Olympic host city.
The younger brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah II cites 35 years of military service and work in “nation-building, security and diplomacy” in a 20-page document. He would give IOC members more “voice and a vote” in IOC business and add five more years to their retirement age, setting the limit at 75.
Prince Feisal suggests athletes should be “properly valued,” a hint at paying prize money, and advocates moving the Summer Games out of July and August, due to climate change and to let more cities bid to host. He proposes regional offices for the IOC, which has about 700 staff in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In less than three years as an IOC member, Lappartient has led a winning Winter Games host bid, for 2030 in the French Alps, and oversaw a 12-year deal with Saudi Arabia to create the Esports Olympic Games. Both projects had Bach’s blessing.
Still, Lappartient would review the system he has thrived in. He also would empower IOC members and suggests their annual meetings should be a debating forum “not just a place where people go to listen to reports.” Seeking to improve efficiency, he would cut the number of committees and how many sit on them.
He suggests having more athlete members – now capped at 15 out of a maximum 115 — and make the IOC Ethics Commission “fully independent in its operations.” Currently it reports to the Bach-chaired executive board. His fast-track candidacy aims to take the Olympics to Africa, find “a balance between the continents for future hosts” and create high performance centers for athletes in each continent. He opposes the IOC paying prize money.
A 42-page manifesto is the longest and most specific on policy proposals.
The banker and son of long-time former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch cites his “proven experience in sport and business, both inside and outside the Olympic Movement.” An IOC member for 23 years, he wants more debate “not presentations with predetermined outcomes,” giving members choices again to pick Olympic host cities, and more flexibility to schedule the Summer Games.
Samaranch would relax broadcast rules to let Olympic athletes use footage of their games performances on social media and be global influencers. He suggests opening new tiers of commercial sponsors, creating a donor program to raise $1 billion within five years for Olympic non-profit foundations, and let other sports hire the Olympic broadcasting operation.
The shortest document at just five pages has clear big ideas, from an expected outsider in the contest.
The key is staging the Olympic Games in all five continents — one city and 10 sports in each — in a 24-hour rolling broadcast. This would add more sports and allow more and smaller cities to be Olympic hosts more sustainably. Also to restructure the IOC as a House and Senate, with a lower chamber of the 206 NOCs and sports governing bodies and a decision-making upper chamber of up to 120 IOC members. The president would have three terms of four years instead of an eight and then four.
Watanabe wants the IOC to focus on business projects for mental health and wellness, and notes his father was exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
FILE - World Athletics President Sebastian Coe holds a press conference at the conclusion of the World Athletics meeting at the Italian National Olympic Committee, headquarters in Rome, Nov. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)
FILE - International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. speaks during a press conference at the headquarters of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee in Beijing, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - IOC member and former swimmer Kirsty Coventry smiles on the arrival for 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)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a lightning military strike, the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and spirited them out of the country to face justice in the United States.
Now President Donald Trump says the U.S. is “going to run” Venezuela until a transition of power can take place, but it's not clear what that will mean on the ground in the South American country.
The overnight operation left Venezuela reeling, with its leadership uncertain and details of casualties and the impact on its military still to emerge. Much is still unknown about how the U.S. ouster of Maduro will ricochet across the country and the region.
Here’s what we know — and what we don’t.
Explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, early Saturday. At least seven blasts were heard in an attack that lasted less than 30 minutes. The targets appeared to include military infrastructure.
Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández said Maduro and Flores were captured at their home within the Ft. Tiuna military installation outside Caracas.
Venezuelan officials said people had been killed, but the scale of casualties was unclear.
The attack followed months of escalating pressure by the Trump administration, which has built up naval forces in the waters off South America and since early September has carried out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. Late last month, the CIA carried out a drone strike at a docking area alleged to have been used by drug cartels.
Trump said during a news conference Saturday the U.S. would run the country and gestured to officials arrayed behind him, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and said they’d be the ones doing it “for a period of time.”
Trump claimed the American presence was already in place, although across Venezuela's capital there were no signs that the U.S. had taken control of the government or military forces.
Trump claimed that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez had been sworn in as president shortly before he spoke to reporters and added she had spoken with Rubio.
“She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple,” Trump said.
Rodriquez made no mention of talking to Rubio or being sworn in during a televised address after Trump's news conference.
Instead, she demanded the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader. Rodriquez left open the door for dialogue with the U.S., while seeking to calm ruling party supporters.
“Here, we have a government with clarity, and I repeat and repeat again … we are willing to have respectful relations,” she said, referring to the Trump administration. “It is the only thing we will accept for a type of relationship after having attacked (Venezuela).”
Armed individuals and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. But in other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.
Trump offered no details on what U.S. leadership in Venezuela would mean or specify whether it would involve more military involvement.
The State Department did not immediately respond to questions about how the U.S. would run Venezuela, what authority it would use to administer it or whether it would involve any American personnel — either civilian or military — on the ground in Caracas or other areas of Venezuela.
Trump mentioned the country's oil infrastructure repeatedly during the news conference. He suggested there would be a substantial U.S. role in Venezuela's oil industry, saying that U.S. oil companies would go in and fix the broken infrastructure.
And Trump said the U.S. would use revenues from oil sales to pay for running the country.
“We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend,” he said.
According to an indictment made public Saturday, Maduro is charged alongside his wife, his son and three others. Maduro is indicted on four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Authorities allege powerful and violent drug trafficking organizations, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Tren de Aragua gang, worked directly with the Venezuelan government and then sent profits to high-ranking officials who helped and protected them in exchange.
It was not immediately clear when Maduro and his wife would make their first court appearance in New York or where they would be detained once in the U.S.
Trump gave some details of the operation during a Saturday morning interview on “Fox and Friends," and he and Caine went into more depth during the news conference.
Trump said a few U.S. members of the operation were injured but he believed no one was killed.
He said Maduro was “highly guarded” in a presidential palace akin to a “fortress” and he tried to get to a safe room but wasn’t able to get there in time.
Trump said U.S. forces practiced the operation ahead of time on a replica building, and the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” although he didn’t detail how they accomplished that.
Caine said the mission had been “meticulously planned” for months, relying on work by the U.S. intelligence community to find Maduro and detail how he moved, lived, ate and what he wore.
The mission involved more than 150 aircraft launched across the Western Hemisphere, Caine said. Helicopters came under fire as they approached “the target area,” he said, and responded with “overwhelming force.”
The U.S. does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and the legal implications of the strike under U.S. law were not immediately clear.
The Trump administration maintains that Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and claims he has effectively turned Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups.
Mike Lee, a U.S. senator from Utah, said on X that the action “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”
But some Democrats were more critical.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement, “President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro — however terrible he is — is a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate the internal political affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere.”
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado had intended to run against Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. She went into hiding and wasn't seen for nearly a year.
Trump said Saturday that he hadn't been in touch with Machado and said it would be “very tough” for her to lead Venezuela.
“She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect,” Trump said.
Lawless reported from London. Associated Press Writer Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.
President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago club, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - President Nicolas Maduro acknowledges supporters alongside first lady Cilia Flores during his closing election campaign rally in Caracas, Venezuela, July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)
Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro embrace in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country. (AP Photo/Cristian Hernandez)
Men watch smoke rising from a dock after explosions were heard at La Guaira port, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Smoke raises at La Carlota airport after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
