Let me attempt to deal briefly with the snow volleyball thing, since I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about it, before going on to consider the meatier question of Bach's first five years.

I think the reason it really gets my goat is that volleyball in its original guise could indeed give the struggling Winter Olympics a much-needed boost, by helping to turn them into a genuinely global event.

Instead, energy is being expended on a project which, if it starts to gain traction, could see Summer Olympic sports racing to dream up new snow- and ice-based novelty formats in the hope that they too might get into the Winter Games.

Rather than work myself up into a lather about this all over again, may I just refer anyone interested to the piece I wrote on the subject last February.

My views have not changed, even if the number of players on either side of the net has.

As for Bach, well, he will probably appreciate the happy memories that Buenos Aires will conjure up because, after a strong start, the last four years have been anything but easy.

His Presidency has, of course, come to be overshadowed by Russia.

I have some sympathy with him over this; he inherited Sochi as the location of the first Olympic Games under his Presidency, and would have had little choice but to cultivate reasonably close ties with the Russian leadership, even if it now seems plain he should have remained more arm’s length.

And once the Russian doping monster reared its head, I think it was right to insist on the principle of individual justice for Russian athletes in the face of the chorus of cries for a blanket ban from Rio 2016.

There was, though, a heavy cost in the form of negative press in the western media and, hence, damage to the once shining Olympic brand.

This, in turn, exacerbated the other besetting problem of recent years: the increasing reluctance of cities outside buoyant Asia to countenance hosting an expensive and ever more complex sports jamboree - particularly the Winter variant - at a time when many of their inhabitants were struggling to make ends meet.

Where I think he needlessly made matters worse was his seeming intolerance of any dissent on an issue, Russian doping, on which one could perfectly respectably hold different views on the best way to react, as many did.

The crisis thus opened up gaping breaches between the IOC and other leading sports bodies – the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) – and weakened the Sports Movement further.

The subsequent treatment of individuals such as Sir Philip Craven and the old Trojan Richard Pound has sometimes appeared unappealingly petty.

And when the nine new IOC members are being welcomed into the mothership in a few days’ time, ask yourselves how odd it is that IAAF President Sebastian Coe has still to be ushered into this pinnacle body given his outstanding track record over 40 years – and I say this though I am not actually his Lordship's biggest fan.

Finally, the unseemly haste with which the IOC lifted its suspension of Russia just three days after Pyeongchang was arguably the biggest PR faux pas of the entire unsavoury episode, placing a question-mark over Bach's feel for the body's public image.

Of course, the IOC's financial strength and the panoply of patronage tools at its leader's disposal leave any IOC President well-equipped to win the day in just about any sporting battle.

Skirmishes with the former SportAccord and the IPC have already been settled very much on the IOC’s terms.

But a wise leader chooses his enemies carefully and, having observed him over something like 1,850 days as top dog, I cannot help but wonder whether the German, who sometimes seems to possess a notably thin skin for someone in his position, chooses them carefully enough.

The more I reflect on Bach's record, the more he strikes me as an accomplished chief executive in the President’s chair.

While the once explosive growth of the Olympic money machine has slowed, his strategic business instincts have proved sound.

Corporate sponsors continue to flock to the Five Rings and the early sealing of a $7.65 billion, three-cycle, broadcasting deal with NBCUniversal – in which I thought at the time that he might have underplayed his hand – has turned out to be well-judged, securing a solid financial base in advance of what have turned out to be surprisingly turbulent times.

Accomplished chief executives are often risk-averse, as Bach has shown himself to be both in this cornerstone deal and the decision to award the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics simultaneously to cities originally vying for the 2024 event.

And they tend to believe in efficiency, which Bach seems to interpret as decision-making by a trusted inner circle – as, again, with that NBC deal – rather than the more unwieldy mechanisms via which the IOC has traditionally functioned.

I know of many people who feel that this new approach – with the IOC operating more like a business and less like a parliament – is sensible and better-suited to a fast-moving age in which decision-making has to be nimble.

But the speed with which the IOC has been reduced, since the near-shock of the 2022 Winter Olympic vote three years ago, to a rubber-stamping chamber has been distressing to behold, even if it could not have been accomplished without most members’ acquiescence.

All too typical of the new IOC was the ultimately tedious spectacle of the 40 Agenda 2020 recommendations being waved through, politburo style, in a Session that actually came a few months before that 2022 vote.

It seems remarkable now how little protection that much-vaunted reform package has afforded Bach and his colleagues during the tough times that have since assailed them.

The last four years would have posed a stern test for any IOC President.

He has got some things right, but his hands-on style and apparent intolerance of criticism and sincerely-held differences of opinion have sometimes prevented him from coming across as the sort of figurehead the Movement needs.

He could do better, but may need to temper the combative side of his nature to do so.