The favourite to become the next president of the International Olympic Committee has opened the door for a summer Games to be staged in Saudi Arabia in the winter.
The Gulf state is considering a bid to host the 2036 Olympics, having just been awarded the World Cup in 2034.
And Juan Antonio Samaranch, who is challenging Britain’s Lord Coe to replace IOC boss Thomas Bach, is welcome to the idea of taking the Games to the Middle East for the first time.
Asked directly by Mail Sport if he could imagine Saudi as future Olympic hosts, the Spaniard said: ‘If I am true to my claim that universality is the centre piece of what we do, then we cannot close our eyes to the fact that under today’s circumstances there is significant parts of the world’s population that cannot even dream of hosting the Olympic Games.
‘That is a significant part of Asia, Middle East, north Africa, southern Europe and a significant part of central America.
‘So we have to make sure that we give the possibility to all these parts of the world to compete in all fairness to organise the Olympic Games.’
Saudi Arabia are currently considering a shock bid to host the summer Olympics in 2036
Juan Antonio Samaranch, who is favourite to become the next IOC president, has opened the door to the gulf state to stage the Games
The news comes after Saudi Arabia were awarded the 2034 FIFA World Cup just last week
The summer Olympics have not been held any later than October since Melbourne 1956, which took place from November 22 to December 8.
But Samaranch insists he would have no problem moving the traditional dates of the Games to adapt to the climate if Saudi was to become hosts, just like FIFA are doing with the World Cup in 2034.
‘I cannot see the possibility of the weather adapting to our calendar, so we will have to adapt the calendar to our weather,’ he said.
The manifestos of the seven candidates for the IOC presidency were launched on Thursday ahead of the election in March.
As a current IOC vice president, Samaranch – whose father served as president from 1980 to 2001 – is considered Coe’s biggest rival for the job.
‘I am not going to define him as a rival, but I can qualify him as an extraordinary friend for many, many years,’ Samaranch said of Coe. ‘I wish him the best. He is an extraordinary, rounded person and very impressive.
‘I am sure he will come with very compelling proposals, some of them we might be on the same page, and many of them we will be on opposite ideas.’
One area where Samaranch does have an opposite idea to Coe is on prize money for athletes.
If Saudia Arabia host the Games it will be held during the winter due to their summer’s extreme climate
Samranach is considered Lord Sebastian Coe’s biggest rival for theposition of IOC president
Samranach doies not believe Olympic medalists shoudl recieve financial reward for their achievements
Coe has suggested all Olympic medallists should receive a financial reward, having given $50,000 to track and field gold medallists at Paris 2024 in his position as World Athletics president.
But Samaranch said: ‘I have a very strong view on that. Ninety per cent of the Olympic Games money is redistributed to national Olympic committees, international federations and the base of the pyramid.
Taking out of that money to reward the Olympic champions, the icing on the cake, is redundant.
‘They are an Olympic athlete, they have a lot of rewards, socially and financially, through their sponsors and their national Olympic committees. There is a little redundancy in having an extra prize directed to them.
‘I would rather use that money and spread it throughout all the Olympians and non-Olympians, to make the sports world as flat as possible. We don’t want to just reward the ones that are already on the top.’
Samaranch is in line with Coe in thinking that the IOC should ‘take the lead’ on ‘protecting the integrity of women’s sports’, by coming up with a robust transgender policy for all Olympic sports.
However, he alarmingly does not believe the IOC did anything wrong in Paris, when Algerian Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan were allowed to win golds in women’s boxing despite being disqualified from last year’s World Championships for failing gender eligibility tests.
‘In boxing, these women have always competed as women and we had to defend their right to participate in the Olympic Games like they had competed in the previous Olympic Games,’ he added. ‘There was no one single proof that they should not.
‘We had to concentrate heavily in trying to protect them from the global harassment that they suffered. That is unfair and it is a demonstration of our commitment to defend people who have differences.’
