Octavian Morariu of Romania and Kristin Kloster Aasen of Norway have been named chairs of Future Host Commissions for the Olympic Games.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board met at Lausanne, Switzerland headquarters Thursday and discussed the creation of the new future host commissions that were mandated by bid reforms approved at the IOC Session in June.
Morarui recently chaired the 2026 Olympic Winter Games bid evaluation commission that resulted in Milan-Cortina of Italy defeating rival Stockholm-Åre by a 47-34 vote. He will be responsible for the Future Winter Games Commission that will launch immediately to consider bids for the 2024 Youth Winter Games and Olympic Winter Games in 2030 and beyond.
Kloster Aasen of Norway was a member of the same 2026 commission and she will be responsible for the Summer Games stream, including the Youth Olympics. Her work will launch at a later date, with the next Youth Games to be awarded for 2026 and Summer Games in 2032.
IOC President Thomas Bach said “quite a few” parties are interested in bidding for the 2032 Games, including a project from Queensland, Australian that had a delegation visit Lausanne last month.
Other possible bids include a joint project from North and South Korea and from Indonesia, India, Germany, China and Russia.
But Bach revealed Thursday that the 2032 Games will not be awarded in 2020, contrary to recent rumours.
The Summer Games Host Commission is comprised of eight members while the Winter Games Host Commission will have six.
IOC members Richard Pound from Canada, Lingwei Li from China, Mikaela Conjuangco Jaworski from Philippines, the Dominican Republic’s Luis Mejia Oviedo and Cape Verde’s Filomena Fortes will be part of the Summer Games Commission.
Sarah Walker of New Zealand will be the athlete representative and Francesco Ricci Bitti of Italy will be the Association of Summer Olympic Sport Federations (ASOIF) delegate. The National Olympic Committees (NOC) representative will be Kenya’s Paul Tergat and International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Andrew Parsons will represent his own organization.
IOC members Gunilla Lindberg of Sweden, Karl Stoss of Austria and Samira Asghari of Afghanistan have been named to the Winter Games Commission. They will be joined by China’s Hong Zhang who will be the athlete representative, ASOIF President Gian-Franco Kasper, Nevin Ilic from Chile as the NOC member and Rita van Driel from the IPC.
If a Commission members’ home country expresses interest in bidding for the Games, they will be asked to step down from their role.
The new Commissions are intended to represent a more proactive approach to the selection of host cities, allowing the IOC to pursue prospects while matching interested countries with the right Games at the right time.
The IOC also eliminated the strict timelines for electing host cities, instead leaving it up the the Commissions to schedule votes as needed.
