The 66-year-old Taiwanese President of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) explained that bid city visits would allow IOC members, who he says are "very limited", play a bigger role in the organisation's future.

"The IOC members coming to the session once a year is their most important meeting," he said.

"They have been assigned to different commissions based on their backgrounds so that is another meeting.

"Apart from this the position of the IOC member in the country is very limited.

"So I propose that in the selection of Olympic [host] cities, the visit to the city is absolutely important.

"We used to have the visit of the bidding city but it was stopped after the Salt Lake City issue.

"Now I ask the losers 'why did you lose?'.

"They say 'We do not know, you tell me, how could you not see me and then you decide it'.

"This is totally difficult to understand.

"The IOC members have to come to see the cities.

"So my proposal is to visit the bidding cities.

"It is absolutely necessary.

"The cost will be borne by the IOC.

"The visits will be three to four months before the election.

"Group visits can be organised, the member can choose the timing they want to visit then they will visit."


Wu believes that his proposal will also help Olympic bidders save money on global travel costs by visiting them rather than the other way around.

"I want to reduce the visits from bidding cities visits to so many events," he said.

"They [bid teams] appear every event.

"Even at a meeting they are there.

"Even if it is nothing to do with the bidding they are there and they spend a lot of money.

"I want to stop this.

"Save the money during the bidding.

"Only IOC members visit, so you don't have to visit the IOC members.

"And also the IOC members can really make a decision objectively, not by the reading of the evaluation report or by listening to the presentation.

"Saving is important, because if they lose the citizen will ask 'why did you spend [so much money]?'.


Olympic bid city visits were once common practice, however they were stopped in the wake of the 2002 Salt Lake City bid scandal, in which several IOC members were accused of taking bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars during the bidding process.

Ultimately, ten members were expelled from the IOC – the first ever members to be kicked out for corruption – and a further ten sanctioned in what is still today the worst scandal in the history of the Olympic Movement.

However, Wu insists the reintroduction of bid city visits would be no cause for concern as the past will now serve as warning to IOC members.

"If somebody wants to bribe, why would they wait for you to come to bribe you?" he said.

"They can bribe anytime.

"IOC members should learn from what happened in the past.

"Nobody wants to put themselves in that situation."

Wu is up against Germany's Thomas Bach, Singapore's Ng Ser Miang, Puerto Rica's Richard Carrion, Switzerland's Denis Oswald and Ukraine's Sergey Bubka in the race to become the next IOC President.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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