Former Olympic pole vaulting champion and record holder Serhiy Bubka declared his candidacy for president of the International Olympic Committee, the website of Ukraine’s Olympic committee announced on May 28.
He made
the announcement immediately after being re-elected to the Association of
Summer Olympic International Federation while attending a SportAccord meeting
in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Bubka,
49, will join Germany’s Thomas Bach, Singapore’s Ng Ser
Miang, C.K. Wu of Taiwan, Puerto Rican Richard Carrion and
Swiss Denis Oswald in a six-way race for one of the biggest jobs in
world sport.
“I
started my international sports career right here, in St. Petersburg, while
qualifying for the 1983 world championship in Helsinki, so it’s here that I’d
like to announced my candidacy for the post of IOC president,” stated Bubka.
He
continued: “I’m lucky that I devoted my whole life to sports. Since I was a kid
I’ve dreamt of becoming an Olympian and my dream came true…it’s a huge honor to
serve the Olympic movement. I deeply believe in the values of the Olympic
movement and its capacity to improve lives in the world. We must continue
recruiting youth to sports, to leading active lifestyles.”
The
Ukrainian six-time world champion, and gold medalist at the Seoul 1988
Olympics, is a member of the powerful IOC Executive board as well as a world
athletics (IAAF) senior vice president.
Reuters reported that before deciding to run for the
top Olympic job, Bubka, still the world record holder in his sport, was seen as
one of two likely candidates to succeed Lamine Diack as head of the IAAF.
The new
IOC president will be elected on Sept. 10 in Buenos Aires, and will succeed Belgian
surgeon Jacques Rogge, whose 12-year stint will come to a mandatory end.
All but one of the IOC presidents in the history of
the organization have been Europeans.
Bubka
has been the chief of Ukraine’s Olympic committee since 2005. During his pole
vaulting career, Bubka set 35 world records and was a 10-time world track and
field champion.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
