On August 8, the 138th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluded its meeting in Tokyo by electing six athletes as IOC Members.

Last week, athletes competing in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 elected four athletes as members of the IOC Athletes’ Commission (AC) for a term that will end at LA28: Pau Gasol (Spain, basketball), Maja Włoszczowska (Poland, cycling), Federica Pellegrini (Italy, swimming) and Yuki Ota (Japan, fencing). All four athletes were put forward by the IOC Executive Board (EB) for election by the IOC Session as IOC Members and were elected yesterday.

Following the IOC AC regulations and in consultation with the outgoing IOC AC Chair, Kirsty Coventry, the IOC President had appointed Humphrey Kayange (Kenya, rugby) to the IOC AC to have a better geographical balance. Following this decision, the IOC EB had also proposed him to the Session for election as an IOC Member, to ensure that there is an athlete representative from Africa amongst the IOC Members.

In addition, the IOC EB had agreed to propose recently appointed IOC AC member Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen (Norway, cross-country skiing) for election as an IOC Member, in line with the AC regulations. Jacobsen joined the AC earlier this year following the resignation of Kikkan Randall, and will remain on the Commission until the end of her term, which will be at the end of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

Oksana Chusovitina was also nominated for vacancies among 30 candidates. Unfortunately, Uzbekistan’s gymnast could not get the necessary number of votes.

Tulqin Ruziyev, UzA