How do you struc­ture a prob­lem in or­der to con­struct a so­lu­tion? Play­ing it safe is the biggest ob­sta­cle to cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion.

In­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions tend to de­ploy their re­sources to sti­fle ex­per­i­men­tal thoughts that don’t fit the pre­scribed nar­ra­tive. It be­comes rote. Think and do rather than think about how we think. But in do­ing so, or­gan­i­sa­tions tend to ex­pose the rab­bit hole of his­tor­i­cal con­tra­dic­tions that raise more ques­tions than an­swers.

You can take peo­ple who have no op­por­tu­ni­ties, who come from bro­ken homes, who en­dure ab­ject pover­ty and dire cir­cum­stances and help them live amaz­ing lives and be­come pil­lars in so­ci­ety. How­ev­er, they need to be treat­ed fair­ly. But to do so what is the con­text? What are you see­ing and hear­ing that may be a bar­ri­er to find­ing so­lu­tions that are rel­e­vant to cur­rent needs and as­pi­ra­tions?

The May 28, 2024 pub­li­ca­tion of—Things That Mat­ter col­umn head­line “Thomas Bach and the IOC on the wrong side of his­to­ry” (in re­spect of fi­nan­cial re­wards to Olympic medal­lists), elicit­ed a re­but­tal from the IOC (In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee).

In the in­ter­est of fair­ness and trans­paren­cy to­day’s Things That Mat­ter share the IOC’s re­ply.

Dear ed­i­tors, please find en­closed a short re­ply to the Op-Ed of Bri­an Lewis from 28 May 2024: “Con­trary to what has been writ­ten in the Op-Ed, the IOC pres­i­dent is not op­pos­ing prize mon­ey. He has ex­plained at mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions that he and his team­mates re­ceived prize mon­ey al­ready 1976 af­ter they had be­come Olympic cham­pi­ons. The prize mon­ey was paid through the Ger­man Sports Aid, a foun­da­tion sup­port­ed by the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (NOC). Pres­i­dent Bach has stressed that it is com­mon prac­tice among many NOCs. Al­so, gov­ern­ments are of­fer­ing prize mon­ey to ath­letes, pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions, spon­sors and oth­ers. The ques­tion of prize mon­ey has long been an­swered in prin­ci­ple and in prac­tice.

“The re­al ques­tion is how to best sup­port the ath­letes. There are dif­fer­ent roles of the dif­fer­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions. The IOC, in or­der to sup­port ath­letes, is dis­trib­ut­ing 90% of all our rev­enues for the de­vel­op­ment of sport and the ath­letes world­wide. This means USD 4.2 mil­lion a day. The NOCs and the In­ter­na­tion­al Sports Fed­er­a­tions are ma­jor re­cip­i­ents of this mon­ey. They par­tic­i­pate in the com­mer­cial suc­cess of the Games.

“Both, NOCs and IFs, have dif­fer­ent roles to play: The NOCs should use this mon­ey to send their best ath­letes to the Olympic Games and to sup­port them in their prepa­ra­tion so they can com­pete at the high­est pos­si­ble lev­el in the Games. Many of them al­so re­ward the suc­cess­ful ath­letes fol­low­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Games by pay­ing prize mon­ey.

“The IFs have a dif­fer­ent role to play. They have, ac­cord­ing to the com­mon un­der­stand­ing, to make every ef­fort to close the gap be­tween the ath­letes com­ing from priv­i­leged coun­tries or NOCs and from less priv­i­leged coun­tries or NOCs. They have to de­vel­op their sport and in this way be part of the sol­i­dar­i­ty ef­fort of the IOC in or­der to cre­ate equal con­di­tions for all ath­letes around the world in the best pos­si­ble way.”

This is the po­si­tion of the IOC pres­i­dent. The ar­ti­cle al­so men­tioned that the IOC would have spent one bil­lion USD un­der Pres­i­dent Bach for its new head­quar­ters, which is one of the most sus­tain­able build­ings in the world and an in­vest­ment in sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and for the Olympic Chan­nel, which is one of the most suc­cess­ful me­dia plat­forms in the world, con­nect­ing the fans with the Olympic Games and the ath­letes. This num­ber is plain wrong.