Berliner Tageblatt - IOC chief Coventry can learn from Infantino on handling Trump: ex-IOC executives

Until now it has been Casey Wasserman, chairman of the LA28 organising committee, and his team who have been dealing with the US administration.

Coventry, the former Zimbabwean swimmer has been in charge for just over a year, is yet to meet Trump.

"Wasserman's team's mandate is to deliver the Games, protect the revenue, and 'make the trains run on time'," Terrence Burns, a former IOC marketing executive, told AFP.

"President Coventry's mandate is to protect universality and the integrity of sport.

"Those two things run in parallel right up to the moment they don't, and the moment they don't is when relationships, not only contracts, matter."

Chief among Coventry's priorities is ensuring safe entry for the thousands of athletes who will compete at the Games.

In terms of numbers the World Cup is miniscule compared to the Olympics -- 11,200 athletes, or 15,000 if you include the Paralympics, as opposed to 1,200 -- but the US refused entry to FIFA-accredited Somali referee Omar Artan and also blocked some of the Iranian entourage.

"Managing the political dynamics counting down to LA 28 is arguably President Coventry's biggest challenge," Michael Payne, a former head of marketing for the IOC who is well-informed on Olympic matters, told AFP.

"It is totally naïve to think that you can have the whole world turn up without a strong engagement with the political authorities," he added.

"Failure by the IOC leadership not to properly engage with the global political establishment is a recipe for disaster."

It is one thing dealing with the political establishment and quite another dealing with the maverick that is Trump.

Asked last year about how she intended to deal with Trump, Coventry said: "I have been dealing with, let's say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old."

Burns, though, said: "Nobody handles him. The question is whether the IOC has a strategy that does not depend on personal chemistry.

"This means a private channel with a respected relationship, and hopefully where no public statement demands a public response."

- 'Pragmatic' -

Infantino has made much of his closeness to Trump -- awarding him the much-ridiculed inaugural FIFA peace prize -- but it has also created problems.

For example, Trump admitted he had intervened by calling Infantino to request that the red card of US World Cup star Folarin Balogun be reviewed to allow him to play in the last-16 match against Belgium.

FIFA promptly suspended the card and Balogun was allowed to play, although the US lost heavily and were eliminated.

Burns suggested if a similar situation had happened to a Cape Verde player, "a call from the President of Cape Verde would not have had a similar result".

"The real lesson for President Coventry regarding Trump is never to mistake proximity for influence," said Burns.

"Infantino just made that mistake in front of the entire world.

"But, and this is important, in the end, Infantino's number one objective is a successful 2026 World Cup, and he is pragmatic enough to understand what it takes to do that.

"One may disagree with how he goes about it, but he's operating in a very narrow lane with a definitive timeline."

Payne says Coventry, a former sports minister in the Zimbabwean government, should take as an example Juan Antonio Samaranch and not Irishman Michael Killanin.

"In the late 1970's IOC President Killanin did not really engage up front with the political authorities and that led to a decade of boycotts that nearly destroyed the Olympic Movement," said Payne.

"Samaranch had to spend much of his presidency engaging with political leaders in order to get them to understand that boycotts were a failed strategy and to support the Olympics."

Coventry could also take a leaf out of her predecessor Thomas Bach's book.

"Toyko 2020 only took place (in 2021 as it had been postponed owing to Covid) because Thomas Bach built a very close relationship with Prime Minister Abe," said Payne.

"Maybe Bach put too much emphasis on politics, but to go in totally the opposite direction, and ignoring the political establishment is not going to work."

F.Pavlenko--BTB