Among the challenges faced by IOC President Thomas Bach, and whoever succeeds him in 2025 at the end of his 12-year term, are those posed by environmental changes and advances in technology. In an interview with AFP, Bach said he would not rule out moving the Summer Games to the autumn and discussed his concerns about how artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to assist doping, as well as the possible inclusion of e-sports in the Olympic programme.

One challenge Bach appears to have faced down successfully is in reversing the trend of countries not being interested in hosting the Olympic Games. He said, "We have never had so much interest in organising the Olympic Games, with 12, sometimes 16 years in advance."

Unlike FIFA, whose showpiece World Cup will soon have more teams, more venues and more organising countries than ever before, the IOC has taken a very different approach by placing an emphasis on reducing costs and reusing existing facilities, as well as limiting the number of participating athletes to 10,500 per edition.

Global warming has a greater impact on the IOC than on FIFA with an IOC study from late last year claiming that only 10 countries would be able to host the Winter Olympics from 2040 onwards.  A Awarding Games far in advance and rotation between venues have been considered for future Winter Games.

Increasingly frequent heat waves can also affect the summer version, as happened with the Tokyo 2020 marathon, which had to be moved to Sapporo and its start moved to dawn to avoid high temperatures. Climate change will require a rethink of "the entire international calendar," admitted the head of Olympism since 2013.

"You will see significant growth in the southern hemisphere," where the Games coincide with the southern winter, "and in the eastern part of the world," predicts Bach, who also envisions the Games being moved to the European autumn, similar to what happened with the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The organisation of the Olympic Games is not the only challenge facing the IOC which has positioned itself as the regulator of world sport, financing much of the fight against doping and international federations, issuing ethical or medical recommendations.

For Bach, sports bodies must now pay special attention to artificial intelligence with the Olympic AI Agenda launched earlier this month aiming to help "identify talent" and "bridge the gap between athletes who have access to the best training programs, nutrition and medical monitoring, with major sponsors and the rest".

However, AI may also have a more troubling use with Bach warning, "I'm not a prophet, but when you look at the combination of AI and biochemistry, you can arrive at a rather dystopian conclusion of what this could mean... to improve the performance of an individual."

For the 70-year-old German, mixing e-sports with traditional sports is out of the question, at least for now.

E-sports had its "Olympic week" in Singapore last June alongside traditional sports, and Bach said, "I don't think that you will see e-sports events at the Olympic Games, but you may see very soon its own Olympic e-sports Games."