Olympic contest to pick IOC president is quirky and controlled by tight campaign and voting rules

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece (AP) — The IOC is the undisputed champion of running the most tightly managed sports election, one compared by veteran Olympic watchers to a conclave to pick a pope.

Some of the seven presidential candidates in the contest on Thursday have aired frustrations with getting limited access to their fellow International Olympic Committee members during a five-month campaign. The voters themselves will get minimal updates between rounds of casting secret ballots on election day.

“It has been difficult to engage,” one leading contender, Sebastian Coe, told reporters last week before heading to Greece. “In future, this just needs to be a more open and expansive process. I think the membership deserves that.”

Those members are as quirky and curious a collective as the sets of IOC election rules that bind them.

Among the 109 eligible voters in the IOC’s invited and exclusive club are royal family members, including the Emir of Qatar, former lawmakers and diplomats, business leaders including billionaires, present and past Olympic athletes plus Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh.

Only IOC members can stand as candidates and a long-time perception has been that outgoing president Thomas Bach has promoted a protégé he hopes will win — even if playing a favorite would seem to breach political neutrality the Olympic movement holds dear.

Bach declined to be drawn in detail on Monday when asked if he intervened with voters on behalf of Kirsty Coventry, the two-time swimming gold medalist from Zimbabwe. She would be the first woman and first African president in the IOC’s 131-year history.

“What I felt obliged to say about the profile of my successor I have said in Paris," said Bach, whose hands-on executive presidency ends formally in June after the term-limited 12 years.

Seven months ago at the Paris Olympics, Bach said “new times are calling for new leaders,” citing the need for a successor immersed in a “technological tsunami” of the digital world.

“I have nothing to add to this,” he said on Monday. He spoke at a news conference after chairing a meeting of his executive board that includes three of the seven candidates, including Coventry.

Coventry is the only woman in the race and just the second-ever female candidate to lead the IOC. A win on Thursday for the sports minister of Zimbabwe would add to Bach’s legacy of gender equality policies.

“I don’t feel that he is out campaigning for me,” she told reporters in an online call in January, adding she “had a good relationship with President Bach since 2013.”

IOC election rules barred candidates from publishing campaign videos, organizing public meetings or taking part in public debates. Voters could not publicly endorse their pick.

Candidates were allowed to write a manifesto the IOC published on the same day in December, then make just one official presentation to their voters at Olympic headquarters in January. Voters could not ask any questions after each 15-minute presentation that was not broadcast.

“If I was the president I think I’d be a little more flexible,” Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan said that day in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The seven candidates have no official media event before Thursday’s vote, though all will go on Tuesday to nearby Ancient Olympia. A formal ceremony there with a Bach speech opens an election gathering that runs through Friday.

The IOC has changed its original plan to cut the online stream of its meeting at a resort hotel when the election process starts on Thursday at about 4 p.m. in Greece (1400 GMT). Members will still have their phones and tablets collected and stored.

Most IOC staff must leave the room so only voters and essential election monitors stay. When a winner emerges the doors will open, the streamed broadcast turned back on and the announcement made.

About 100 members should be present and eligible in the first round to cast electronic votes. Candidates can vote but any compatriot is excluded for as long as they stay in the contest.

One of the expected strong contenders, IOC vice president Juan Antonio Samaranch, can vote for himself but his fellow Spaniard Pau Gasol, the two-time NBA champion, cannot.

“Members should vote for what they believe is best for the Olympic movement," Samaranch said on Monday in a statement. “It is not about personalities or friendships. And it is definitely not about identity politics.”

The winner must get an absolute majority that likely will not happen in the first round. Several rounds could be needed. Until there is a winner, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. If there is a tie for the lowest total, a runoff vote between them will decide who is eliminated.

However, voters will not be told the totals for each candidate after each round. Instead, Bach “will announce only the name of the candidate who will not participate in the following round of voting,” the IOC rules state.

Bach “will not exercise his right to vote but he reserves his right to exercise a casting vote.”

The next IOC president — just the 10th ever — will take office on Olympic Day, June 23, at a ceremony in Lausanne.

AP Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach leaves after a press conference, ahead of the 144th session which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, southwestern Greece, Monday, March 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

FILE - Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Juan Antonio Samaranch Junior speaks during a press conference following a presentation before their fellow IOC members in Lausanne, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan 30, 2025 (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Sebastian Coe speaks during a press conference following a presentation before their fellow IOC members in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Jan 30, 2025 (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo via AP)

FILE - International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, left, and IOC member and former swimmer Kirsty Coventry, right, speak during 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)

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach speaks during a press conference, ahead of the 144th session which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, southwestern Greece, Monday, March 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Mohamad Al-Assi ran beneath the concrete wall as the sun rose over Bethlehem. His Nikes pounded the gravel, his breath fogging the air as graffiti and paint splatter blurred past with each stride.

The road along the barrier separating Israel from the occupied West Bank makes up a stretch of a marathon route that Al-Assi and thousands of others ran on Friday. The event is open to people in other parts of the world running in solidarity with the Palestinians and another, shorter race was happening in Gaza.

The race, known as the Palestine Marathon, was held for the first time in three years and was among the first big international events in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Festivals, conferences and holiday festivities that once drew thousands have been scaled back or canceled because of the war in Gaza and heightened Israeli restrictions.

It marked a turning point for Al-Assi, 27, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago. Video from that day shows him gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed, his once muscular legs weakened after more than two and a half years of prison.

He began training in December, gradually upping his mileage every month since. He ran 62 miles (100 kilometers) that first month, and in April reached 135 miles (217 kilometers), according to his account on the tracking app Strava.

He jogs in the morning after his mother wakes him up in their home in Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp made up of graffiti-covered cinderblock homes in tangled alleyways.

“The main difficulties we face are the cars on the roads and the presence of Israeli security forces along the route where I train,” Al-Assi said.

He had to suspend his training several times because of military operations in the camp.

“I would return home feeling hopeless because I couldn't do what I had intended to do,” Al-Assi said.

In the West Bank, runners cannot complete a 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) course without hitting a checkpoint or military gate, which is why Friday's marathon route looped around the same circuit twice.

They ran up through the narrow streets of two Palestinian refugee camps and down to a farming town next to Bethlehem where fields are divided by the concrete wall, barbed wire and cameras. The course hooked back to finish at Bethlehem’s Manger Square.

Organizers say the race highlights restrictions facing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where checkpoints can disrupt even routine commutes and where open land for hiking, biking and running is increasingly taken by Israeli settlements and outposts.

“Marathon runners anywhere may ‘hit a wall’ under the physical and emotional strain of completing the 42-kilometer race course," they said on the marathon's website.

But in the West Bank, they added, "runners literally hit the Wall.”

At a time when the West Bank’s economy is struggling and in the shadow of Gaza's fragile ceasefire and stalled rebuilding efforts, the atmosphere in Bethlehem was celebratory. Crowds gathered near the Church of the Nativity to cheer runners at the race's early morning start and finish. Bagpipes blared and drummers pounded out traditional rhythms through streets along the route.

On a beachside road in Nuseirat in central Gaza — which is roughly the length of a marathon — 15 disabled people, including amputees, ran a 2K, and a couple thousand of people ran a 5K. Thirteen years after the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, canceled a 2013 marathon because Hamas forbade women from participating, the women were back.

Haya Alnaji, a 22-year-old woman who ran in the 5K, said the number of people taking part reflected that Palestinians in Gaza were determined to live and persevere despite the devastation wrought by more than two years of war.

“All of Gaza loves sports,” she said.

Al-Assi was arrested in April 2023, and imprisoned under administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold detainees for months without charge. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Palestinians are being held under that system, according to Israeli rights groups and the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

In October 2023, Al-Assi was sentenced for transferring money to suspicious entities, a charge he denies. Israel closely monitors money transfers — particularly to Gaza — for fear that funds could end up in the hands of militants. Palestinians, however, say donations and charitable contributions are often swept up in the dragnet. Israel’s military, Shin Bet and Prison Service did not answer questions about Al-Assi's charges.

In Israeli prisons — where detainees routinely complain of inadequate diets — Al-Assi said nearly everyone goes hungry. The weight he lost eroded the endurance built through 10 years of training.

“I have more muscle mass than fat, so when I lost weight, the loss came from my muscles rather than fat,” he said. “This had a major impact on my physical fitness.”

He also had to regain the mental fortitude to run a marathon.

“I was emotionally shattered after spending such a long period in prison,” he said.

On Friday, he collapsed to his knees, bowing and thanking God after finishing second overall, as supporters and journalists encircled him. He dedicated his run to Palestinians still in Israeli detention.

“After 32 months in prison, Mohamad Al-Assi is first in his class!” he shouted through tears, raising his hands and looking up to the sky.

__ Imad Isseid contributed from Bethlehem, West Bank and Abdel Kareem Hana from Nuseirat, Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian amputee runner takes part in the 2-kilometer Palestine Marathon along the coastal road near Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, Friday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinian runners take part in the 5-kilometer Palestine Marathon along the coastal road near Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, Friday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Runners participate in the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Friday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Runners pass by Israel's separation wall as they compete in the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Friday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian Mohamad Al-Assi, who was released from Israeli detention six months ago, runs past Israel's separation wall as he trains ahead of the Palestine Marathon in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Thursday, May 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Sam Metz)