Eight months after Fifa chief Gianni Infantino gave his ”Today I feel gay” speech, delivered with all the self-awareness of Jake Humphrey and the gravitas of a spoon, Olympic president Thomas Bach visited Paris one year out from the 2024 Games and decided to invoke John Lennon.
“The Olympic Games must never erect walls,” Bach said, forgetting about the climbing event. “Imagine. You may say we are dreamers. We are not the only ones.”
He was trying to explain why our fractured world needs the Olympic Games more than ever to help heal “conflict, division and war”. This seems like a stretch. Certainly, one person who needs the Games is Bach, a man who works for the not-for-profit International Olympic Committee and receives €275,000 per year in “indemnity” payments, in what must be the world’s most lucrative volunteer gig.
This story is from the July 28, 2023 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the July 28, 2023 edition of The Independent.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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