Olympic presidency: Sarah Walker and Marcus Daniell voting in IOC secret ballot – Sports Insider

Sarah Walker, Sebastian Coe, Rohit Sharma and Marcus Daniell. Photos / Photosport

Two Kiwi Olympic medallists are among an elite group who will decide the next boss of the Games movement in an over-the-top election veiled in secrecy; Does Lord Sebastian Coe have New Zealand’s vote? And how Donald Trump could blow up the NRL’s expansion plans into Papua New Guinea. All in today’s Sports Insider.

Presidents are in the news a lot lately, one in particular. So maybe it was inevitable the spotlight would eventually fall on sport.

A vote to decide who will fill the most powerful position in world sport – the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – will take place in Switzerland late next week and two New Zealanders are among the 109 decision-makers.

The problem is there’s a very good chance none of us will ever learn who they voted for and why.

Nor are Sarah Walker and Marcus Daniell obliged to tell the New Zealand Olympic Committee, upon whose board they sit.

Walker, our greatest BMX rider and a silver medallist at the 2012 London Olympics, and Daniell, a tennis doubles bronze medallist from the 2020 Tokyo Games (held in 2021 due to Covid), are our two delegates to the IOC, the richest and most powerful sporting organisation on earth.

Sarah Walker during the final of the women's BMX event at the 2012 London Olympics. Photo / Brett Phibbs

It’s also the most autocratic and antiquated. And, in terms of secrecy, it makes a papal succession look lightweight.

On March 21 in Lausanne, the Olympic equivalent of white smoke from the Vatican chimney revealing the next Pope will unfold as the IOC delegates decide who replaces Thomas Bach, the German who has held the role for 12 years.

Sports Insider has been following the build-up to the vote for several months now as increasing criticism mounts over how the Olympics select their boss.

Last week, in an article headlined “The closed-door battle to lead the Olympics”, the New York Times described the voting process as “the quirkiest election in sports”.

The London-based Guardian newspaper was more forthright.

In analysing the prospects of England’s strongest candidate Lord Sebastian Coe, one of seven contenders for the plum role, it headlined its story “No transparency please, we’re the IOC”.

The secrecy – let alone the manner in which the decision the election decision is made – would border on comical if it wasn’t so important.

The 109 delegates do not have to tell anybody who they voted for, including their own national Olympic committee – which nominated them.

Lord Sebastian Coe. Photo / Photosport

Walker was in Lausanne last month when Coe and the other six candidates made individual 15-minute PowerPoint presentations to the delegates ahead of the vote. The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) confirmed to Sports Insider that Daniell didn’t attend.

The presentations were not allowed to be webcast or recorded, microphones were automatically turned off at the 15-minute mark and no questions were allowed to be asked.

It’s worth pausing here to remind ourselves that the Olympics have been tarnished for decades now by repeated scandals, corruption, cheating and doping.

And that the next Games, in Los Angeles in 2028, will play out within the presidency shadow of the biggest conman in the world, Donald Trump.

It’s why this vote matters.

But delegates were not permitted to ask how the incoming IOC boss intends to navigate Trump’s constant reality TV show and other global tensions that could cause the LA Games to implode, let alone the other overdue reforms needed.

NZOC is a mere pawn in the game

None of this is the NZOC’s fault of course.

Or Walker’s or Daniell’s.

All are just pawns in a wider sporting game of thrones, where transparency is the enemy.

Their hands are tied by the IOC, as evidenced in the responses to Sports Insider’s questions about who New Zealand intends to vote for.

“The New Zealand Olympic committee does not have a vote for the presidential candidacy, this right is reserved for IOC members only,” the NZOC said in a statement.

“All elected members get a vote, whether present or not. They do not have to disclose to the NZOC or the public how they voted.”

“Sarah Walker attended the closed-door session in Lausanne and both Sarah and Marcus are eligible to vote.

“As independent voters, they will make their decision based on their own convictions, without direction from the NZOC. Both have a deep understanding of New Zealand’s values and its role within the international Olympic movement.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s start with the bleeding obvious.

Why all the secret-squirrel stuff?

New Zealand taxpayers contribute to our Olympians via high-performance grants. Most of us are quite happy to support our top athletes, but the Olympic overlords treat member countries and their citizens like poor saps who have no right to know anything.

And then there’s the matter of Daniell not being at the Lausanne presentations. Given they weren’t filmed and contenders are banned from lobbying, how does he know who should get his vote?

Marcus Daniell is an NZOC representative for the vote. Photo / Photosport

That’s not a crack at Daniell. He’s been very industrious since becoming an IOC delegate, but this is a process that makes David Seymour’s school lunches debacle look like a highly precise Swiss watch.

So where does New Zealand – and its two delegates – stand on important issues like including nations that start wars, human rights (the Saudis are bidding to host a future Olympics), tackling doping and the elephant in the room of prizemoney for athletes (the Games is still the only major sporting event that refuses to pay its competing athletes)?

They are all important issues that many Kiwis care about. Yet we remain kept in the dark by an antiquated and anachronistic global organisation that continues to extort host countries and competitors.

I am sure sanity has secretly (there’s that word again) prevailed within the corridors of the NZOC and they know full well who Walker and Daniell will be voting for and why.

Perhaps the NZOC or Sarah and Marcus could tell us all after March 21.

Or perhaps the overlords will muzzle them.

My money’s on the latter.

Coe is the strongest choice to cut the rot

Lord Sebastian Coe is fondly regarded by Kiwis and is the best hope for future transparency.

A dual Olympic gold medallist in the 1500m – a middle-distance event revered by New Zealanders after the Sir Peter Snell and Sir John Walker eras – Coe has also proved his administrative mettle by successfully running the 2012 Games in London.

In another nonsensical IOC rule, candidates for the presidency are banned from holding debates, criticising each other’s policies, or even receiving public endorsements.

The Olympics say this is to make it a fair fight. In reality, it’s about retaining the veil of secrecy. No transparency here, thank you.

So Coe and other contenders are restricted in telling us all in any great detail what they would change if in charge.

One of the first calls Thomas Bach received after becoming president in 2013 was from Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Russia of course hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi the following year, a Games that remains blighted by the most cynical state-sponsored doping scandal in Olympic and sporting history.

Coe fell out with Bach after World Athletics banned Russia for its Sochi sins with the Olympics boss resisting similar campaigns to hold Putin and his country accountable.

It’s likely to be held against him, with plenty of Bach loyalists among the 100-plus delegates and the man himself flouting the rules by endorsing one of Coe’s rivals.

Among others, Coe is being challenged by a Jordanian prince, a former Olympic female swimmer from Zimbabwe and the son of controversial Spanish autocrat Juan Antonio Samaranch, who ruled the Games with an iron first from 1980 to 2001.

Prince Feisal Al Hussein, Jordan’s candidate who has run on a campaign of uniting the east and west through sport, believes the secrecy is over the top.

“Personally I wish there was more transparency and openness,” he told the Guardian. “If we’re looking at the most powerful job in sport, then the world should understand who the people who are running are.

“I would prefer that we would present and the whole world would see.”

Could Trump scuttle Papua New Guinea’s NRL team?

On the subject of sports and politics, the NRL’s decision to grant its next expansion licence to a team based out of Papua-New Guinea could blow up in its face.

The franchise, recently announced as the 18th club in the Australian competition, is being financed to the tune of A$600 million ($661m) by the Aussie and American Governments as – wait for it – a means of keeping China out of the South Pacific region.

But now that the self-described genius in the White House wants to buddy up to the world’s dictators and become a member of their exclusive club, how long before the deal falls apart?

A Donald Trump deal with China could have knock-on effects into the NRL. Photo / Jabin Botsford, Washington Post

Leading CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria has probably never heard of rugby league, but you could easily see the Papua New Guinea syndicate being a victim of what he described as the global havoc Donald Trump is causing.

“Consider Australia’s example,” Zakaria said. “Over the past few years, it worked with America to confront China.

“But what if Trump makes his own deal with China, as some Australian officials fear he might? Then Australia would suffer China’s wrath alone while America reaped benefits.”

Any Trump deal with China will surely see the US walk away from protecting the Pacific from aggressors – and writing out cheques for rugby league players living in Port Moresby is an easy win for Elon Musk and Doge.

It was a questionable decision in the first place to make an expansion decision based on geo-politics. Now Trump is running riot, it’s looking plain daft, with every likelihood it will blow up in the NRL’s face.

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