A look at the seven candidates in the International Olympic Committee presidential election

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece (AP) — A look at the seven candidates in the International Olympic Committee presidential election on Thursday:

The most obviously qualified candidate in the field though likely not favorite. A two-time Olympic champion runner in the 1,500 meters; led the winning bid and organizing of the 2012 London Olympics; the president for a decade of track body World Athletics; his former jobs include elected lawmaker in the British parliament and head of the British Olympic Association. World Athletics is in the front line of drafting eligibility rules designed to protect women's events, including on transgender athletes. Another signature policy was paying $50,000 prize money to track and field gold medalists at the 2024 Paris Olympics. That move, and how it was announced, annoyed outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach and also leaders of other sports. Some of those will vote Thursday. Has promised IOC members more genuine involvement in debates and decisions. And to present himself for re-election after four years instead of eight.

A two-time Olympic champion in swimming and currently the appointed sports minister of Zimbabwe. At age 41, she would be a young IOC president, also the first woman and first African leader in its 131-year history. Crucially, she has Bach's support and in her manifesto offered almost complete continuity with his policies. How active and interventionist that support has been is a major talking point. She is widely expected to lead in the first-round ballot. From 2018-21 she was athlete representative on the Bach-chaired IOC executive board. That period did little to expand athlete commercial rights now proposed by other candidates.

The Swedish-born, British citizen president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation since 2021. Also the billionaire owner and former long-time CEO of the Head sportswear and equipment brand. He has been an advisor to British governments of both main political parties. A key line in his manifesto was this is “no time for a novice." Long involved in environmental projects. As a response to the challenges of changing climate, proposes rotating the Winter Games among a group of permanent venues. Opposes paying athlete prize money from IOC revenues, and wants to ensure "only those who were born female can compete in women’s sport.” If Eliasch does not win, he might soon rise to the IOC executive board.

The younger brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II, Prince Feisal is the latest of his family to run for sports leadership. His sister Princess Haya was a former IOC member when president of equestrian's governing body — and like Prince Feisal, voted in Thomas Bach's 2013 win — and their brother Prince Ali was a FIFA vice president who twice ran for the top job in 2015 and 2016. “I grew up in a family that knows all about service,” Prince Feisal said Wednesday. From a military background, he has led Jordan's Olympic body for 22 years, joined the IOC in 2010 and created a peace-promoting sports NGO. He proposes giving members more input, that athletes should be “properly valued” and would open continental offices to decentralize the 700-strong IOC administration in Switzerland.

The former mayor of a small town in Brittany, France, has been president of the International Cycling Union since 2017. Lappartient is a fast-rising and busy IOC member since joining just three years ago. He already oversaw, at Bach's request, preparing a 12-year deal with Saudi Arabia for creating and staging video gaming Esport Olympics. It will debut in 2027. As head of the French Olympic body, he quickly pulled together an Olympics bid in 2023 leading to the French Alps hosting the 2030 Winter Games. Though he has flourished in the Bach presidency, his manifesto proposes ideas including giving members more active input, cutting the number of committees and giving the IOC Ethics Commission independence from the president's office. Aged just 51, a loss Thursday need not end his IOC leadership ambition.

Samaranch turned seven in the year his father, also Juan Antonio, was first elected as an IOC member in 1966. He joined the IOC at the same 2001 meeting in Moscow where his father stood down after 21 years as president. Now at 65 comes the chance to follow his father leading the worldwide Olympic movement. Samaranch positions himself as a genuinely global figure tuned in to all political challenges the IOC presidency demands. He grew up in Franco’s Spain, experienced Soviet Russia when his father was ambassador there, worked in 1980s banking and finance in the U.S. and is well connected in modern China. Samaranch was the IOC's point person preparing for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games in a pandemic lockdown that was President Xi Jinping's personal project. He has been on the IOC board for most of the past 13 years and delivered a manifesto with the most policy proposals. He wants to relax strict broadcast rules and let Olympic athletes use footage of their games performances on social media and be global influencers.

Though clearly an outsider in the IOC contest, the Japanese president of the International Gymnastics Federation had some of the most vivid ideas in his manifesto. An eye-catching rethinking of the Summer Games suggested a rolling 24-hour sports program across five continents: one city and 10 sports in each of five continents. Watanabe said this would add more sports and allow more and smaller cities to be Olympic hosts while meeting sustainability targets. He also would restructure the IOC as a House and Senate. A lower chamber of the 206 national Olympic bodies and sports governing bodies would recommend ideas for a decision-making upper chamber of up to 120 IOC members. The IOC president would have three terms of four years instead of the current initial eight year mandate followed by four years.

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International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach speaks during the 144th session which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee Morinari Watanabe arrives at the mixed zone during a break of the 144th session, which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee Juan Antonio Samaranch arrives to the mixed zone during a break of the 144th session, which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee David Lappartient makes statements to the reporters during a break of the 144th session, which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the IOC Prince Feisal Al-Hussein arrives at the mixed zone during a break of the 144th session, which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee Johan Eliasch arrives at the mixed zone during a break of the 144th session, which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Kirsty Coventry arrivers for the 144th session which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Candidate to the presidency of the International Olympic Committee Sebastian Coe arrives at the mixed zone during a break of the 144th session, which will elect the new IOC President, in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

FILE - This combo of Jan. 30, 2025, file photos, shows the seven candidates in the International Olympic Committee presidential election, from top row from left, Sebastian Coe, Kirsty Coventry, Johan Eliasch, and Prince Feisal al Hussein, bottom row from left, David Lappartient, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Morinari Watanabe. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool Photo via AP, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel, two semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported Tuesday, as tensions flared in Israel's separate but related fight against the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The halt in communication was likely meant to increase pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump over negotiations on the Iran war ceasefire and loosening the Islamic Republic's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and the oil, gas and other commodities that normally pass through it. Trump then could potentially push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt or slow the advance of his forces, which have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in over a quarter of a century.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not address the reported cutoff in communications as he testified at a congressional hearing in Washington. Instead, he sounded an optimistic note about the nuclear dimension of the negotiations, while cautioning that there's no guarantee of reaching "a deal that’s acceptable.”

The reports by the Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, come as the conflicts in Iran and Lebanon have increasingly become conjoined. Iran insists that any potential truce in the war there must also quell the fighting in Lebanon, where Hezbollah remains one of Iran's chief allies in its self-described “axis of resistance” against Israel.

A regional official involved in the mediation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, told The Associated Press that Iran had not communicated at all on Tuesday after saying that a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.

Israel and the U.S. maintain the fighting in Lebanon is separate from the Iran war talks.

Meanwhile, year-on-year inflation in Iran reached a level in May unseen since World War II, underlining the economic pain average Iranians are facing. While the U.S. is eager to ease the Islamic Republic's grip on the strait — through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed in peacetime — Iran faces economic challenges as its oil-backed economy remains under a U.S. naval blockade.

Economic pressure touched off nationwide protests in Iran in 2017 into 2018, when rising food prices sparked demonstrations that killed over 20 people and saw hundreds arrested. The next year, an increase in government-subsidized gasoline prices caused protests that saw over 300 people reportedly killed.

Then came the protests over the collapsing value of Iran's currency, the rial, at the start of this year. They were the most intense demonstrations to shake the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution and the chaotic years that followed. Iran's theocracy met January's protests with a crackdown on demonstrators in January that killed over 7,000 people, according to activists' estimates.

Now, even as hard-liners hold gun-handling workshops and organize marriages under the shadow of a ballistic missile to bolster spirits, experts note there could be new demonstrations if people find themselves priced out of feeding their families.

“I have no doubt that if Trump leaves (Iran without a formal peace deal) ... most probably, we will see something like January by the end of summer because of the economic and social situations," analyst Mohsen Jalilvand said in a video published by Iran's Fararu news website.

Iran's Central Bank said the consumer price index, which measures a basket of goods and services, reached 77.2% in May compared with the year before. The rate is 8.5% higher than in April, the bank added. Inflation in daily and general needs — like medicine, taxi fares, tobacco and communication fees — rose 113.8% from the year before.

A private economic think tank in Iran, the Bamdad Institute of Economic Studies, described the current figures as “an unprecedented rate since World War II.” Iran’s Central Bank did not acknowledge the significance of the figures.

The previous record came in 1942. During the war, the British and Soviets invaded Iran and took over its railway, disrupting food supplies. The lack of food, worsened by a poor harvest, sparked hyperinflation and a famine. Hunger and a typhus outbreak killed many.

Airstrikes this year have greatly damaged Iran's businesses and its oil industry, Meanwhile, the U.S. blockade has been targeting Iranian crude oil shipments trying to reach the international market, a key source of hard revenue. Tax revenues have been depressed by businesses struggling even after the fighting paused.

The rial, which traded at 32,000 to $1 in 2015, now trades at over 1.7 million to $1.

“We will definitely have higher prices," Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned in May. "We are fighting, and we must accept this hardship.”

Tehran-based economist Saeed Leilaz, speaking to the AP, warned that annual inflation in Iran could reach 80%.

"Iran’s society cannot tolerate above 25%” annual inflation, he said.

Karimi reported from Tehran, Iran. Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed from New York.

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike that hit Qlaileh village, as it seen from the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

A destroyed building that was hit in an Israeli airstrike is seen through a shattered window of the Jabal Amel Hospital, in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo)

A nurse looks through a shattered window of the Jabal Amel Hospital into a destroyed building that was hit Monday in an Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

People gather on paddleboards in shallow water as cargo and service vessels are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)

People walk at Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Pedestrians and vehicles cross an intersection around Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Men sit at the gate of a mosque at Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A woman walks at Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People carry packages at Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Iran, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)