The International Olympic Committee held its presidential election on Thursday in Greece as seven candidates vied to replace Thomas Bach. One of those candidates was David Lappartient – but the current UCI President will not be stepping into the new role he so desired.
Former Olympic swimmer Kirsty Coventry won the election on the first ballot after receiving 49 of 97 votes. Lappartient received only four.
Coventry's win and the fact that she compiled a majority of the available votes (albeit the slimmest possible majority) without needing to advance to another round of voting were particularly noteworthy when Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. and Sebastian Coe were both seen as having strong chances in the election, as Iain Treloar noted earlier this week here at Escape Collective. Samaranch finished second in the voting, with 28 votes, while Coe received the third-most votes with eight.
Coventry will be the first woman ever to serve in the role of IOC president, replacing Bach after he decided to retire after 12 years in the role.
Lappartient had hoped to have supporters of his own among the voters, and it seemed possible that he might be able to count on a few votes from Africa and the Middle East, but a significant Lappartient voting block apparently failed to materialize. Presidential balloting is secret and thus the specific decision of each voter will remain unknown, but when all was said and done, only four of those voters backed Lappartient.
As such, the Frenchman will likely remain involved in cycling instead of broadening his horizons to the wider world of sport. The first big question is whether he will run for a third term as UCI president – the election for the next four-year term is this year – and the next is of course whether he would win.
Whatever he does is sure to have ramifications within the world of bike racing. At present, relations between the UCI and the ASO, the sport's biggest organizer, remain relatively cozy. Had Lappartient moved into a new job, those dynamics could have changed, which might have been a boon for other power blocks in the sport like the nascent One Cycling project.
With Lappartient potentially sticking around at the head of cycling's governing body, however, efforts to shake up the systems currently in place could continue to face road blocks.
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