It has been mentioned in virtually every press conference, bubbling in the background at every major sporting event and in the mind of every bidding and potentially bidding city, not to mention every consultant seeking a new contract...

I remember its unveiling last December in a rather bitter-sweet sense. IOC President Bach first introduced the Agenda in a Saturday afternoon teleconference following an Executive Board meeting in Montreux. For me it had been a late night the evening before and I rolled out of bed lazily contemplating a relaxed day before being greeted by a flurry of emails telling me I was covering the conference and that I was going to find out about this, this and this.

After managing to survive this, the next major step came in Sochi, where the IOC membership discussed and debated all of the proposals in an impressively robust manner. Then came an Olympic Summit in Lausanne and two further Executive Board meetings, before the 40, sorry, 20+20, recommendations were made public last month.

Thomas Bach and his IOC Executive Board colleagues in Montreux in December 2013, during the meeting in which Olympic Agenda 2020 was first proposed
©IOC/Christophe Moratal



The context of the disastrous 2022 Olympic race, where city after city has withdrawn due to a coalition of Governmental and public opposition, has made the process seem all the more important, while the success of new sports and disciplines in events like the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing has also widened the appetite for change.

Yet while these proposals could be seminal for those who make their livelihood from this world, for everyone else outside the Olympic bubble, it has all been notably less significant.

As colleagues have pointed out, in the mainstream press the coverage can only have been described as limited, and, at time of writing as Bach delivers his lengthy Opening Ceremony address to begin proceedings, the journalistic "wires" are not exactly bubbling with excitement.

On the plane here, after telling the British passenger next to me the reason for my visit, there was a five second pause as she clearly thought hard for a potential response. Eventually, her eyes lit up and she replied: "Oh, will Sebastian Coe be there?"

Hatricks by football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have drawn the global sporting headlines this weekend, rather than any pre-Agenda 2020 excitement
©AFP/Getty Images



So why is this interest so slight? And what could the IOC have done to make it greater?

The obvious answer to both of these questions is that they could have made their reforms more wide-reaching and profound.

Yes, there are some interesting and potentially important changes being proposed, but most are limited and open to interpretation, with the implications too subtle and conditional for headlines to be generated. In fact, you could argue the only concrete change resulting from the whole process is the introduction of an Olympic Television Channel, something exciting and much-desired but which has also raised eyebrows as to how successful it will prove in practice.

Of the various other proposals, changes to the Olympic bidding process and to the sports programme are the most interesting.

With regard to the former, the possibility for more events to be held in different locations in order to cut costs could change the bidding landscape. But in practice, the movement of a few sports further away from the host city, as Tokyo 2020 is proposing, is far more likely than the coming into fruition of audacious rumours emerging in recent hours that sliding sports at the Pyeongchang 2018 Games will be held in either Japan, North America or Europe.

This could come back to bite me, but these reports seem more a way to give the South Korean organisers a proverbial kick up the backside and to draw attention to the potential of the Agenda 2020 changes rather than a realistic proposal. At this stage at least, anyway.

While most reports on possible changes to the sports programme have focused on the strong likelihood of baseball and softball reappearing in Tokyo, and other sports, from squash to skateboarding and sport climbing, possibly featuring at some point, the changes within existing disciplines is most interesting.

Less popular events in sports like athletics, swimming and gymnastics could be under threat and international federations are already tripping over themselves to introduce innovative formats, such as mixed gender events in triathlon, bobsleigh and synchronised swimming, in a bid to demonstrate modernising tendencies.

Baseball and softball's Olympic return is one much-talked about possible consequence of Agenda 2020, but other new disciplines, like mixed synchronised swimming, could also emerge ©FINA



This represents the speeding up of a process which began a few years ago but it does mean that, more than ever, sports cannot afford to rest on their laurels and be complacent.

Among other interesting areas is a register for Olympic bidding consultants, and a change to the Host City Contract regarding non-discrimination and environmental and working standards. But most of the rest concerns opinions already expressed, like a commitment to "protect clean athletes" and to "forge relationships with professional leagues", or to "support autonomy" and "further blend sport and culture".

And it is typical that one area rumoured to provoke the fiercest debate over the next two days concerns internal politics, in the form of age limits for IOC members.

In fact, one of the more striking reforms featuring at the Session is not even part of the Agenda 2020 proposals at all, namely the fact that all votes will be public via show of hand rather than privately via electronic means. This is a sign of increased openness and transparency, the IOC has claimed, although a cynic would speculate it is more a "three-line whip" for IOC members, to implicitly warn them their decisions will not go unnoticed.

But this brings me onto an idea, proposed by World Badminton Federation President and Danish IOC member, Poul-Erik Høyer, for the host city election votes of IOC members to also be conducted publicly. Although this idea got much approval on social media and with the general public, it does not seem to have been seriously considered as part of the reforms.

And this is why, in my opinion, Agenda 2020 is limited and will not gain the public attention the IOC so desire.

Public votes by IOC members in host city contests would be a radical reform, which has not been proposed ©AFP/Getty Images





A proposal which seems to make perfect sense to most of the world, and would immediately increase openness and transparency to a far greater and more obvious way than anything proposed, is predictably brushed aside.

Too great a threat to the established status quo, I presume.

So while in a decade's time we may look back at December 8 and 9 and mark it as a profound, watershed moment in the history of the Olympic Movement, I doubt that will actually be the case, and the changes will be more subtle and incremental than the sweeping reforms promised.

Yet on the other hand, while gradual, it is still progress, and as shown by the decision to accept Kosovo as a provisional IOC member in October, the IOC has shown itself capable of making controversial but important decisions. And the best point of comparison for the Olympics is FIFA, where reform measures like these still appear light years away.

So as the Session begins, Bach and the IOC should be praised for the "bold step" of Olympic Agenda 2020, but they should not be praised too much.

For it marks a small shuffle rather than a giant leap.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.