IOC Congresses
The Olympic Congress is a meeting of representatives of the constituent organisations of the Olympic Movement – IOC Members, National Olympic Committees, International Federations and Organising Committees of the Olympic Games – as well as athletes, coaches, the media, sponsors and other stakeholders.
It is convened by the IOC President at intervals decided by the IOC. Its role is consultative.
Congress history
The original invitation to what became the inaugural Olympic Congress, sent out by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in his capacity as secretary general of the Union of French Sports Associations, was entitled: “Reflections on and Propagation of the Principles of Amateurism”.
The principal reason for calling another Olympic Congress three years after the inaugural meeting in Paris and just over a year after the first Olympic Games in Athens was to address the Greek demand to host the Olympics permanently.
The Brussels Congress of 1905 was to have taken place two years earlier in order to determine the regulations of the 1904 Olympics, but when the head of the Organising Committee resigned it was postponed to 1905.
The Olympic Congress returned to Paris in 1906 for what Pierre de Coubertin described as an “Advisory Conference”.
The reunion at Lausanne University in 1913 took the Olympic Congress to an altogether higher intellectual plane.
In 1914 the Olympic Congress was held in Paris for the third time, returning to the Sorbonne to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Olympic movement.
The resumption of Olympic Congresses following the First World War took place in Lausanne because, during the war, Pierre de Coubertin had moved the IOC headquarters there for the sake of neutrality.
For his final Olympic Congress before retiring as president of the IOC, Pierre de Coubertin was determined to return to the broad Olympic themes of previous Congresses which discussed the role of sport in society and other such intellectual pursuits.
Questions of amateur status had occupied a significant amount of time during almost every Olympic Congress, and the last one before a break of more than 40 years was no different.
The modern era of the Olympic Congress began in 1973 in Varna, Bulgaria, which was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its NOC.
At the 1981 Congress in Baden-Baden, Germany, expectations were great, falling as it did just a year after the boycotted Moscow Games and with Los Angeles around the corner.
The Centennial Olympic Congress in 1994, otherwise known as the Congress of Unity, was held in Paris, just as the first Congress had been.
The XIII Olympic Congress, entitled “The Olympic Movement in society”, was held from 3 to 5 October 2009 in Copenhagen (Denmark) and brought together more than one thousand participants. The Congress provided a rare opportunity for the entire Olympic Family to meet and discuss issues of importance to the entire Movement.