In sport, Juan Antonio Samaranch was largely anonymous beyond the small world in which he operated when he acceded to the Presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1980. Yet he is now seen as the second-most important figure in the modern Olympic Movement.

It is not even as if the Spaniard grew into the role: his early decisions, while the Olympics were in genuine jeopardy, have largely turned out to be the most important.

Just under three years ago, when elected convincingly as the IOC’s ninth President, barring a certain charisma deficit (but then no-one ever accused Samaranch of being charismatic), Thomas Bach appeared to have it all.

Even those who voted for one of the German lawyer’s rivals acknowledged that he looked admirably equipped for the task.

A lifetime’s immersion in Olympism had coalesced into a thoughtful manifesto based on the development of sport’s autonomy, and hence independence.

After 12 years of Jacques Rogge’s straight but stolidly defensive bat, the Movement was ready for something a touch more adventurous.

Thirty-four and a half months later, we have gone from Unity in Diversity, his most distinctive slogan, to leadership’s oldest cliché – it’s lonely at the top.

The Russian crisis has opened up breaches with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), governing body of the bedrock Olympic sport, presided over since last year by Sebastian Coe, one of Bach’s oldest Olympic friends.

He eviscerated SportAccord in order to topple Marius Vizer, its ambitious, provocative leader.

The exposed flaws of other sports organisations and leaders have set the autonomy agenda back 20 years.

Looking back, it is possible we may come to situate the high-point of Bach’s Presidency as early as the first full week of November 2013, just two months after it started.

This was when he both addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and floated the idea that became the IOC’s deal of the century - the $7.7 billion (£4.5 billion/€5.5 billion) sale of US broadcasting rights to the Games between 2021 and 2032 - at a dinner with NBCUniversal executives. 

Since then, far too much time and energy has been absorbed by the German’s grand obsession: Olympic Agenda 2020.

insidethegames has received flak for styling this “much ado about very little”, yet when you think how little protection the reform package has afforded Bach and his colleagues during the present maelstrom, the label still seems apt.

The whole exercise’s significance may lie ultimately in what it appeared designed to do - attempt to make the new President look consensual while simultaneously underlining his authority - rather than the substance of its recommendations.

Even its most innovative proposal - the Olympic Channel - has tumbled far down the problem-plagued Olympic news agenda.

While the Movement was thus distracted, the serial crises we have spent much of the past two years writing about - Rio, FIFA, the IAAF, doping, the dearth of five-star prospective Winter Olympic hosts - were gathering like cumulo nimbus on the horizon, harbingers of the percussive storm now battering us.

Quite a lot of this is not Bach’s fault, although a wilier leader would have sensed trouble brewing much sooner and switched priorities accordingly.

The choice of Rio – which seemed so visionary in 2009, but so premature now - predated his watch.

So did that of Sochi - and if the then obscure Black Sea outpost had not won the 2014 Winter Games, perhaps Russian authorities would not have tried to subvert doping rules as brazenly as now alleged.

Undoubtedly, the IOC’s ill-starred relationship with the Putin regime could have remained much more arm’s length.

As regular readers will know, I would actually applaud Bach’s extreme reluctance to sacrifice the principle of individual justice in the face of the chorus of cries for a blanket ban of Russian athletes from Rio.

But things were allowed to reach such a point that a public relations disaster could not be avoided,

The section of Sunday’s statement relating to whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova - and the attempted ban of offending Russians who have completed their sanctions - were frankly embarrassing.

With the three-to-four-week window in every four years when the Olympics commands the world’s attention now almost upon us, Bach needs a slice of luck - and he needs to rise to the occasion.

Rio might yet be magnificent - at least on television; if the sport can seize centre-stage, in spite of everything, and there are no calamities, the IOC President has half a chance to spark a mood-change.

But make no mistake, with the Games about to slope off to Asia - a diverse, populous and increasingly prosperous continent, but not the Olympic world’s traditional centre of gravity - for the next three editions, we may well be entering the defining period of his Presidency.

Bach must cast off his frustration and show, first, that he gets the seriousness of the situation, second, that he has some semblance of a plan for how to address it and, third, that he is prepared to set the tone in terms of shipping out dead wood and enabling sport to equip itself with the sort of leaders it needs to pilot deep reforms.

Loyalty is not the most important gauge of able management - far from it.

Key sponsors and broadcast partners are mainly signed up long in advance, the legacy of the Movement’s past success, so slumping revenue streams should not be an issue - a real bonus when other fundamentals need so much attention.

The flagship product - the Summer Games - remains much sought-after, even allowing for the mind-boggling complexity of organising it and putting it on; but there needs to be real progress on governance and doping issues by the time the 2024 race ends in September 2017, or so one feels, if damaging questions are not to multiply.

Is he up to it?

Well, he is a clever and cultured man. Nearly everything in his life up to September 2013 seemed to be gearing him up to be IOC President.

But leadership, to repeat, is a funny thing.

I keep being reminded in recent times of a story Bach told, if I am not mistaken, in a conference call during his Presidency campaign.

The punch-line was a piece of advice he had been given as a young IOC member to “always sleep with both eyes open”, or words to that effect.

Andy Grove, the old Intel boss, had a different way of putting it: “only the paranoid survive”.

While paranoia might be fine, even necessary, for a leader to survive, however, it is no guarantor of good leadership.

It is time for Bach to prove once and for all that not only can he sleep with both eyes open, but that he can manage with both eyes open as well.