"It is…clear that without the new flexibility under Olympic Agenda 2020, there would be no Candidates Cities at all for the Olympic Games 2024."

I find it remarkable on two counts.

1. It is conjecture: the "new flexibility" existed; therefore no-one, not us, not even Bach from his privileged vantage-point as International Olympic Committee (IOC) President can be sure what would have happened without it.

2. Even if it were clear, why would a reigning IOC President go out of his way to acknowledge such a thing?

The answer to that question offers a good insight into how stubbornly Bach continues to present his motherhood-and-apple-pie reform agenda as a key Olympic landmark.

The statement is, as I say, conjecture; nevertheless, it has not escaped even me that prospective Games hosts are not exactly hurling themselves at the IOC at present.

My personal belief, however, is that there would have been at least one bidder for 2024 even if la règle du jeu had remained identical to what we can now pinpoint as Peak Olympic Bid Mania - July 2003, deadline to apply to be the 2012 host-city.

Why do I say this? Because if you are the only credible bidder, you to a large degree write the rule-book, not the IOC.

At worst, therefore, it seems to me that an opportunistic bidder would have presented itself no doubt late in the day - perhaps from China (yes, them again!), or the Middle East, or maybe even the United States.

Such a scenario, of course, would have been far from ideal, and would not have commended itself to the IOC, which would have lost much of its accustomed control over the process.

This concept of control is becoming a theme of the Bach years - as indeed in the wider world, where right-wing populism is being espoused as a route to reasserting it.

The next paragraph of the New Year’s message addresses further possible reform of the bid process, with Bach appearing to argue that it is necessary, albeit seemingly not - I mention in passing - before the 2024 winner is designated next September.

"On a more long-term perspective," the IOC President writes, "we need to recognise that the current candidature process produces too many losers. Therefore, we need to study ways to reform the candidature process beyond 2024, to ensure that the best host city is selected for the Olympic Games while minimising the losers."

I have reflected a lot on this matter in 2016, and while I can appreciate what has given rise to the sentiment, I am far from convinced that the sort of changes one has heard being put about would represent an improvement.

For one thing, the way in which the argument is being framed is partly bogus.

The problem for the IOC is that there are currently too few losers - just one in the 2022 Winter Games race - not too many.

I think we can be fairly sure that if the process were continuing, as in the 2012 contest, to produce eight largely high-calibre losers, there would be little question of anything being changed.

More important is this question of control: I have heard several people, usually but not exclusively Americans, arguing in essence that too much is now at stake with the Olympic Games to allow host-cities to be chosen on the whim of a private club, however distinguished.

Better, this argument runs, to allow the choice to be made in the way that a multinational corporation might go about it: by having its Board determine the optimum location based on detailed, quantified analysis and the directors' perception of the long-term interests of the corporation.

This opposition between traditional democracy and supposedly more efficient corporatism is at the heart of ongoing debates over sports governance far beyond the Olympic Movement, reflecting the ever mightier torrents of cash being channelled into the sector.

As a trend, I think the drift towards corporatism will probably gather momentum, not least because the leaderships of sports bodies will see it as a means of increasing their control.

Occasionally, I can concede, it might produce better governance, at least for a time.

But, inscrutable private club as it may be, I really don’t think the IOC’s track record in choosing host-cities over the past generation or two has been bad enough for the case to have been made for this power to be wrested away from it.

Admittedly, the paragraph in Bach’s message contains nothing specific on the reforms to be studied, even if the sort of changes I have heard bandied about during these past couple of years of crisis would frequently truncate the absolute freedom of choice among candidate-cities that IOC members currently enjoy.

It is worth bearing in mind that had the choice of 2020 Olympic Games host been in the gift of the IOC Executive Board, I think there is a strong chance we would now be preparing for Istanbul 2020 and fretting about how to secure an event in a spectacular city with the immense misfortune to be part of the front-line in the war between western-style liberalism and Islamism.

It is also fair to say that the unexpectedly high vote for Almaty in the 2022 race sent the healthy message to the IOC leadership that, while members might obediently and unanimously have passed all 40 Agenda 2020 recommendations in open voting, they were unwilling to be reduced to rubber-stamp status.

Part of what leads me to think that the case for reform is overdone is history: what happened last time the field of candidate-cities shrank almost to vanishing-point?

One of the 2024 candidates, Los Angeles, remember, had no rivals at all the last time it hosted, in 1984.

What resulted was a process that was a nightmare for the IOC to manage, since it had forfeited many of its levers of control, but ultimately an event that arguably saved the entire Olympic franchise because it demonstrated a) that the Games could be seriously profitable and b) that politically-motivated boycotts were largely self-defeating.

There were still only two bidders for the 1988 Summer Games, awarded in 1981, i.e before Los Angeles had delivered its game-changing tonic, and many thought the IOC had taken leave of its senses by preferring Seoul to the Japanese city of Nagoya by a clear 52-27 margin.

Of course it had not. 

The 1992 field - with six contenders for the Summer Games and no fewer than seven for the Winter - marked the start of that golden Olympic bidding era which recently drew to a close.

So my first advice of the New Year for what it is worth would be, do not overreact to the tepid recent bid races and current lack of enthusiasm for hosting in Western Europe by clipping the wings of the IOC membership.

Yes, the system of informal favour-trading at the heart of the club’s decision-making may sometimes overstep the mark and will not be found in modern management manuals.

But for all its occasional understandable mistakes, such as Rio 2016, its overall track record these past 60-some years is not too shabby.