On July 8, Thomas Bach rounded off the second day of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board meeting by watching in the foyer of Lausanne's Palace hotel as his native Germany trounced hosts Brazil 7-1 in a FIFA World Cup semi-final.

Since his election as IOC President in Buenos Aires a year ago, on 10 September 2013, Bach and his team have often looked as slick and well-organised as that world champion German side; but - one year into a potentially 12-year reign - it is much too soon to judge whether they will accomplish their aims so completely.

That is not to say, stretching the analogy to breaking-point, that the 60-year-old athlete-turned-administrator has not nodded in the odd early goal.

Chief among these, by my estimation, is the $7.65 billion (£4.51 billion/€5.49 billion) deal, unveiled last May, selling United States broadcasting rights to the Olympic Games between 2021 and 2032 across all media platforms to NBCUniversal (NBCU).

Yes, some might argue - given how profoundly the media world will change over the next two decades, and that the sums involved average out, by my calculation, to around a 16 percent increase per four-year Olympic cycle over the last deal - that Bach may turn out to have underplayed his hand and would have done better not to commit so far into the future.

A more pragmatic appraisal in my view is to acknowledge that a solid financial base has been put in place - equivalent to perhaps 20 per cent of the revenue that the Movement would realistically want to have at its disposal over the deal's 12-year span.

This may give the IOC the security to negotiate more aggressively with other media partners, should it deem individual markets strong enough.

It should be remembered too that broadcasting revenues, though resilient, will show far slower growth in the 2013-2016 quadrennium than the explosive near 50 percent advance the Movement benefited from in 2009-2012.

In such circumstances, the latest NBCU deal also sends out a strong message to other potential commercial partners about the long-term desirability of the Olympic property.

In a second important point, I think the NBCU deal indicates the limits of the collegial management style the IOC President has appeared to set so much store by during his first months in office.

When Bach, fresh from addressing the United Nations, first broached the idea of what I think may fairly be called the IOC's deal of the century (so far), last November at a New York dinner with NBCU executives, he was accompanied by just two senior IOC officials.

"We kept it among the three of us," he later confided.

Thomas Bach has reinjected momentum into the Olympic Movement since replacing Jacques Rogge as IOC President exactly a year ago ©Getty Images

Another big achievement of the first 12 months of the Bach era has been to reinject momentum into a Movement that had been rather drifting along in the final phase of Jacques Rogge's Presidency.

Rogge's great accomplishment was to restore the IOC's reputation for integrity.

This was no small thing: the financial bonanza which the unfailingly serious Belgian presided over, as the world's most powerful political leaders, and business and television executives, fought for a piece of the Olympic action, would probably have been a lot less lucrative without that first step.

When it came to the vision thing, though, the Rogge regime inspired far less confidence, with the jury, for me, still out on whether his baby, the Youth Olympic Games, is an effective - and cost-effective - way of enticing young people to engage with the Movement.

With the benefit of hindsight, his second term was perhaps a mistake - and the sheer number of balls Bach has thrown up into the air since his election is perhaps a reflection of that.

One other thing I would say, is that Bach's instincts regarding what the late British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once alluded to as "events, dear boy, events" have so far been sound.

Thomas Bach has faced some controversies in his first year, particularly the Winter Olympics in Sochi, an event closely associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin
©AFP/Getty Images

He struck the right tone over the various controversies relating to the fact that this year's Winter Olympics were staged in Vladimir Putin's Russia, and seems in recent months to have damped down very considerable fears over the rate of progress in preparations for Rio 2016.

He has presided over a marked improvement in relations between the IOC and the United States, while appearing to do what he can to encourage other potential bidders for the 2024 Summer Games that the US seems to covet.

I think the high priority he appears to be giving to the establishment of an Olympic TV channel is also sensible.

For the rest - most notably the consequences of his Olympic Agenda 2020 reform process - it is just too early to say.

Encouragingly, what might have been a dauntingly complex process has so far been choreographed adroitly yet inclusively.

Much the most taxing period, however, will be the next three months, as key proposals are distilled then put up for approval by IOC members.

Will sensible improvements in areas such as the bidding process and the choice of sporting programme be made?

It will be fascinating to see: given his sure-footed start, you wouldn't bet against Bach navigating a path through the maze; but so many vested interests are in play that enacting a cohesive and game-changing set of reforms will not be easy.

I can't help thinking it is a pity that this bridge wasn't crossed a few years ago, while the Olympic horizon was blissfully trouble-free.

One reason for saying this is that I sense that the sheer jam-packed crowdedness of Bach's first year programme has contributed to what has seemed to me a rather flat-footed response to the lack of love for the Olympics - for the idea of hosting them at any rate - being displayed in a number of affluent West European cities, in particular oil-rich Oslo.

In my discussions on the subject, Olympic leaders have seemed surprised and genuinely puzzled by the depth and extent of antipathy and scepticism that has set in.

Olympic Agenda 2020 should enable them to formulate a general response to the problem, but may have hampered the prompt concoction of a specific one.

Yes, more flexibility in bidding criteria and the IOC's demands may help, but I fear an effective response may have to delve deeper than that, perhaps embracing reforms to the marketing restrictions that have helped secure the Movement's finances, but contribute to local people and businesses feeling estranged from 'their' events.

Thomas Bach has taken encouraging steps to re-engage the Olympic Movement with the world's youth ©Nanjing 2014

There are other big issues too which, while a mere sports body has no obligation to grapple with, you would like to think - given that Bach has met, we are told, 81 heads of state and government already - that the IOC would want to make some sort of contribution to tackling.

Could the Movement do more to prevent the radicalisation of young Muslims?

That, admittedly, is a hugely tall order, but sport ought, you feel, to be part of the solution to such pressing world problems if it is to merit the value its leaders clearly feel it deserves.

Closer to home, has the Movement got the balance right between allowing rich and powerful nations to wallow in conspicuous Olympic, and Paralympic, success and helping athletes from weak, impoverished countries overcome odds that inevitably are stacked against them?

Could it do more to combat obesity?

One could go on.

So, as excellent a start as Bach has made - and I wouldn't be surprised if some in Lausanne have been a little taken aback at the workload - there is still plenty more to do, or at least, that could be done.

Yes, the football-loving former fencer has scored early points, but four years in - halfway through his initial term - will be the time to pass meaningful judgement.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.