(Reuters) – International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach said on Saturday that the 2032 Brisbane Summer Games will be a significant event not only for Australia but for the entire Pacific region.
Visiting Brisbane for the first time since the city was awarded the Games last year, Bach, who has been on a tour of Australia’s neighbours, told reporters that the Olympic spirit was truly alive in the region.
“I can say because I have been travelling in the meantime in the Pacific, that these Olympic Games will not only be Games in Australia, and for Australia, this will be an Olympic Games with the whole Pacific region,” he said.
“But what is important for Brisbane and Australia is what I said before, it’s everywhere, it’s a great anticipation of these Games Brisbane 2032. They are all excited, they are all motivated.”
Brisbane will become the third Australian city to host the Olympics, after Melbourne in 1956 and Sydney in 2000.
Bach, who took part in an “Olympics Unleashed” session at a high school in south Brisbane, said the challenge was to keep the momentum going.
“We see now the Olympic spirit truly alive here in Brisbane and Queensland and Australia. And this will be the challenge for the next 10 years to keep this Olympic spirit as alive as it is and to reach out to the world,” he said.
The IOC has yet to decide whether to include the modern pentathlon in the 2028 Los Angeles Games after athletes wrote to the governing body over the controversial plan to replace horse riding with obstacle racing.
“We are waiting now for the decisions to be taken in the international federation, we are monitoring also the way, how they are taken and after this then the executive board will take a decision either later this year or at the latest then beginning of next year,” Bach said.
(Reporting by Dhruv Munjal in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard)
