Have we hit peak Sheikh? That was a question being posed in the luxury hotel bars of Kuala Lumpur last week during the 128th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session.
For the past two years, the hand of Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah has been perceived to be all over international sports power politics, purportedly exercising a key influence over all manner of decisions from the election of Thomas Bach as IOC President to the entrenchment of Bahrain’s Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa as President of the Asian Football Confederation and FIFA vice president.
Last week in Malaysia, however, big surprise: while Beijing squeaked home by 44 votes to 40 in its race against Almaty for the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, the result was far closer than anticipated.
The received wisdom in the run-up to the vote (based on what, I know not) was that the ideal result from the Sheikh’s perspective would be a clear-cut win for the Chinese capital in which the Kazakh bidder secured enough votes to encourage it to think it might win in 2026 or 2030.
In the event, the Chinese tally was at least 10 votes lower than expected.
Now you would have to say that Almaty, spearheaded by a bravura display by Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov, gave IOC members every excuse to be won over, going for broke in the final 24 hours when they knew they were trailing.
Nevertheless, good presentations are not always reflected in Olympic voting figures, and some interpreted the tightness of the result as a sign that smaller beasts in the international sports jungle are starting to feel more inclined to exercise their independence.
It is an interesting theory, but frankly I am not sure I buy it; not yet anyway.
What I am prepared to believe is that the focus on FIFA in recent months might have caused attention to drift – temporarily – from other matters. In June, after all, Sheikh Ahmad prioritised the glitz and politics of the Champions League final in Berlin over an Executive Committee meeting of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), one of the bodies he presides over and which is the source of much of his influence in the Olympic Movement.
It is also true that Bach is probably at the height of his Olympic powers and that, having almost effortlessly got the better of Marius Vizer in the trial of strength that the former SportAccord President had unwisely touched off, and facing no fresh Presidential election until 2021, the Sheikh’s support is ostensibly less critical to the German than at any time in recent years.
But that does not mean it isn’t useful, and there is no sign that I have detected that the two men have fallen out.
I would also say that the Winter Games is by no means the same animal as its Summer counterpart. It is not the flagship product, not the goose that lays the Five Rings’ golden egg. It is accordingly easier in my opinion for IOC members to vote with their hearts over their heads in Winter Games elections. Some, moreover, are citizens of countries where snow and ice scarcely ever forms.
If I may draw an analogy with UK politics, I would liken it to the way British voters are perceived either to take less interest, or sometimes to vote more recklessly, in European elections because they feel in their bones that they don’t really, really matter.
I will be much more inclined to reassess the power balance if the two-year race for the 2024 Summer Olympics, for which contestants are just now limbering up, produces a result similarly perceived to diverge widely from the outcome the Sheikh was thought to want.
Make no mistake, Sheikh Ahmad’s network remains formidably impressive. In addition to injecting ANOC with a new sense of purpose, he presides over both the Olympic Council of Asia and the IOC’s Olympic Solidarity Commission. This commission must approve in principle the four-year plan that determines how Olympic TV money is redistributed to National Olympic Committees. For every $6 of revenue from the sale of broadcasting rights to the Games that the IOC collected in its last four-year cycle, $1 is being channelled via Olympic Solidarity on its way back out.
He is also, lest we forget, a newly-installed member of the FIFA Executive Committee and an absolutely key figure in the machinations that will determine who eventually succeeds Sepp Blatter as FIFA President.
On July 23, meanwhile, with most of us focused on the build-up to the preliminary 2018 World Cup draw in St Petersburg two days’ later, the Sheikh’s power-base was strengthened further with the election of his close ally and right-hand man Husain Al Mussallam, another Kuwaiti, as the first holder of the newly created office of First Vice President of the International Swimming Federation (FINA). As such, Al Mussallam becomes heir apparent of the second- or third-most important Olympic sport federation, and a likely future IOC member.
Oh, and don’t think for one moment that Sheikh Ahmad, himself 23 years an IOC member, is unfamiliar with the influence of François Carrard, the former IOC director general who has emerged as a possible chairman of FIFA’s reform task force.
At the rather momentous June 8 garden party marking the inauguration of the new ANOC headquarters in Lausanne that I wrote about some weeks ago (http://www.insideworldfootball.com/david-owen/17222-by-david-owen-platini-and-the-sheikh-marriage-made-in-berlin-and-lausanne) , who should mosey over while I was greeting Sebastian Coe, the famous British middle-distance runner now campaigning for the top job in the biggest Olympic sport of all – athletics, but Carrard.
The pair proceeded to finalise what appeared to be a gentlemen’s agreement handing Coe another of his dream jobs: board member of the celebrated Montreux Jazz Festival. Carrard – a lawyer whose stint in the IOC director general’s job stretched from 1989 to 2003, including the period of the Salt Lake City scandal and subsequent reforms – is President of the Festival’s Administrative Committee.
Peak Sheikh? I would be surprised.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.