German Thomas Bach was voted the new president of the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday.
Bach, 59, a 1976 Olympic champion for West Germany in team foil fencing, succeeds Jacques Rogge, whose term limit is up after an initial eight-year term followed by a second four-year term.
“I know of the great responsibility of an IOC president,” Bach said. “This makes me humble. I want to lead the IOC according to my motto, ‘Unity and Diversity.’”
Bach, elected to an eight-year term with the possibility of a four-year renewal, is the ninth president in the 119-year history of the IOC. He has been an IOC member since 1991, the IOC vice president and the head of the German Olympic Committee.
Bach won a majority of votes over six total candidates. It took two rounds of secret-ballot voting.
“I will do my very best to balance well all the different interests of the stakeholders of the Olympic movement,” Bach, a lawyer, said. “You should know that my door, my ears and my heart are always open.”
He beat five other candidates -- Sergey Bubka (Ukraine), Richard Carrion (Puerto Rico), C.K. Wu (Taiwan), Ng Ser Miang (Singapore) and Denis Oswald (Switzerland). The voting would eliminate one candidate per round until somebody received more than 50 percent of the total vote.
The final vote totals in the second round:
Bach: 49
Carrion: 29
Ng: 6
Oswald: 5
Bubka: 4
Wu was eliminated in the first round after a tiebreaker runoff vote with Ng.
Dmitry Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Organizing Committee, captured video of the announcement and posted it shortly after:
http://instagram.com/p/eFdeIbwAWh/
Here is the full list of IOC presidents:
Demetrius Vikelas, Greece (1894-96)
Pierre de Coubertin, France (1896-1925)
Henri de Baillet-Latour, Belgium (1925-42)
J. Sigfrid Edstrom, Sweden (1946-52)
Avery Brundage, U.S. (1952-72)
Lord Killanin, Ireland (1972-80)
Juan Antonio Samaranch, Spain (1980-2001)
Jacques Rogge, Belgium (2001-13)
Thomas Bach, Germany (2013-)
