Leadership woes weigh on IWF’s Olympic hopes
LAUSANNE • The crisis-hit International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), fighting to keep its place at the 2024 Paris Olympics, last Friday named a third president in a troubled week.
It had appointed Michael Irani, the British chair of the federation’s medical committee and a former chair of its anti-doping commission, as its interim president.
While Irani accepted the nomination, he insisted he was not interested doing the job full time, but was committed to furthering reforms around the issue of drug testing that has plagued the sport.
“I am grateful to the IWF executive board for entrusting me with the presidency on an interim basis,” he said. “I do not intend to stand as a candidate for the IWF president position in the future, so I will be able to focus fully on the reforms leading up to a clear and transparent IWF Congress (In March next year).”
The Budapest-based IWF had removed its interim president, American Ursula Garza Papandrea, after an executive board vote at an emergency meeting last Tuesday.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the next day that it was “very worried” about the boardroom putsch, saying they had “enjoyed excellent cooperation” with Papandrea.
The IOC did not name her replacement but the chief executive of USA Weightlifting Phil Andrews announced in a statement that Thailand’s Intarat Yodbangtoey had taken over the post.
The Olympic body has threatened last week to “reconsider the place of weightlifting on the programme of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024”.
It will make a final decision on the events and quotas of athletes for the Games by December.
Weightlifting has been in turmoil since January when a documentary by German TV channel ARD revealed what it described as a “culture of corruption” in the sport intended to mask the use of doping.
Hungarian Tamas Ajan, 81, president of the IWF for 20 years after serving as its secretary-general for 24, rejected the accusations as “lies” before being pressured into resigning in April.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE