Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 30 -- Logue, who passed away quietly, is what kind of Olympic "helmsman" helmsman.
Xinhua News Agency reporters Gao Peng and Wang Yong
On 29 August 2021, eight years after stepping down as president of the International Olympic Committee, Belgian Jacques Logue died quietly at the age of 79.
Although Logue did not recreate the Olympic Movement as much as his predecessor Samaranch, his resolute anti-doping, anti-corruption, and visionary vision of the founding of the Youth Olympic Games still left an indelible and glorious mark on the history of this "century-old store".
For Chinese, he is also a close "old friend" - he witnessed China's first Olympic host and gave the Beijing Olympic Games "unparalleled" comments.
The Boat of Destiny
Logue has been associated with sports all his life. Born in a coastal city, he has often gone to sea with his parents since the age of 3. As a young man, Logue competed in three Olympic regattas, winning one world championship and two world runners-up. He also played rugby, winning the Belgian League championship and playing for Belgium for 10 years.
At the age of 34, Logue ended his career as an athlete, entered the university to study medicine, and after receiving his doctorate, became a plastic surgeon. His love of sports made Logue not far from the Olympic Movement in addition to practicing medicine. In the year of his retirement, he was invited to join the Belgian Olympic Committee, which later became president.
His linguistic strengths ——— he was fluent in Dutch and French, he was able to speak English, German and Spanish, which was an advantage for further promotion to the international Olympic management. In 1989, Rogge was elected President of the European Olympic Committee. In 1991, at Samaranch's invitation, Logue became a member of the International Olympic Committee. Ten years later, he took over the supreme scepter of the Olympic Movement from Savon and ushered in a new era.
In a 2005 interview, Logue revealed that he never wanted to join the IOC as an athlete, let alone become president of the IOC, and in his opinion, "everything is a coincidence".
After stepping down as President of the International Olympic Committee, Logue also remained unsuited for sport as the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Youth, Refugees and Sport, continuing to contribute to a better world.
Heavy hand reform
Although he was not at the helm of the IOC in Logue's original life plan, he had a strong sense of mission and responsibility for the Olympic Movement. During its 12 years under rule, the IOC undertook a series of drastic reforms, first swinging at the doping cancer of the sport.
Logue once said that if one day people are reluctant to send their children to sports clubs for fear that they will use doping, then the arrival of this day will also mean the degeneration of sports. Therefore, from the formation of the Anti-Doping Committee to the continuous increase in the number of doping tests in the Olympic Games, to the prompting of all international individual sports organizations to accept the severe penalties imposed by the World Anti-Doping Regulations on athletes who violate the rules, he has burned the "fire" of anti-doping more and more vigorously.
On the eve of the opening of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, two athletes from host Greece refused to be tested for doping on the grounds that they were being treated in hospitals in a traffic accident. Under great pressure to offend the hosts, Logue was resolute and uncompromising, eventually forcing the two to withdraw from the Olympics, thus announcing to the world sports world a firm anti-doping stance.
Compared with anti-doping work, another important reform of Rogge's tenure, the Olympic "slimming" program, has not been very effective.
In the Samaranch era, the Olympic Games conformed to the trend of the era of commercialization and professionalization, ushered in a change of rebirth, and the reputation gradually grew. However, the increasing scale of the Olympic Games and the increasing economic pressure on the host countries have also made some weak and small countries sigh. Therefore, Logue advocates excluding some projects that are behind the times and have poor ornamentation from the Olympic Games, and accepting some emerging projects in order to maintain the vitality of the Olympic Games and reduce the cost of hosting. However, because the adjustment of the project is related to the survival and development of the project and the medals of various countries (regions) in the Olympic Games, there are many obstacles to cutting off the old projects and introducing new projects. By the time Logue stepped down, his goal of limiting the size of the Summer Olympics to 10,500 athletes and 28 major events had not been achieved. To this day, eight years into the reign of his successor, Bach, this dilemma remains unresolved.
Logue has said that the Youth Olympic Games are his greatest legacy to the Olympic movement. Founded by Rogge and aimed at young people aged 15 to 18, this "mini Olympic Games" is a beautiful ideal of returning the Olympic Movement to its value source and inspiring the education of the younger generation. Although there have been oppositions within the IOC for the establishment of the Youth Olympic Games, today, the Youth Olympic Games have gone through 11 years, and have held six sessions (three in summer and three in winter), from encouraging more young people to participate in sports, to "testing" new projects for the Olympic Games, to helping small and medium-sized cities realize their dreams of the Olympic Games, its value and significance are being recognized by more and more people.
Chinese friendship
On July 13, 2001, Beijing successfully bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, and three days later, Rogge was elected president of the International Olympic Committee. Because of this fate, Logue maintains a special friendship with China.
During his presidency of the International Olympic Committee, Logue has visited China more than 20 times, leaving his presence in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Nanjing, Guangzhou and other cities and even street communities. After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Logue wrote three letters of condolences to Chinese leaders, and the International Olympic Committee also donated the first $1 million to the disaster areas. At the closing ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Logue said in his speech that the Beijing Olympic Games are a truly "unparalleled" Olympic Games. This comment is still widely circulated today.
Logue has a keen interest in Chinese culture. His secretary once revealed that every time before coming to China, Logue would ask his secretary to write a sentence or two on the card Chinese, and pronounce each Chinese character, learning a few chinese words in this way. One day in March 2003, Beijing sent the IOC the "China Seal", the design plan for the emblem of the 2008 Olympic Games, and according to the usual practice, the president of the IOC had to sign and confirm the sample emblem. On that occasion, Logue surprised everyone present — he asked his secretary to take his Own Chinese seal and clay and stamp the emblem sample with the "Logue's Seal" in a dignified manner.
Logue also greatly appreciated China's contribution to the Olympic Movement. In the past ten years, he has repeatedly written inscriptions for the special issue of Civilization magazine sponsored by the Capital Civilization Engineering Foundation to express his recognition and support for the journal's long-term promotion of Olympic culture. In January 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Although Logue had not appeared in public for a long time due to his poor physical condition, he still came to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne to greet President Xi on the spot, expressing his special friendship with China.
The wise are invisible
All along, Logue has given the impression of being gentle and elegant, calm and rational, but not smiling. When interviewed, no matter whether the question is tricky or relaxed, he always has a calm face, a gentle speech, and mood and anger. The only exception was at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, where a Georgian bobsleigh player died unexpectedly in training before the start of the game, and shortly after the tragedy, at the press conference before the opening, Logue had not yet spoken, and the tears could not stop flowing. In a trembling voice, he said: "I feel very sad that we lost a young Georgian player before the opening of the Winter Olympics. Logue has confessed that it was the darkest moment in his 12 years as president of the International Olympic Committee.
During his time at the IOC, Logue pursued a democratic and equal management style, boldly and fully decentralized, and won wide acclaim from his colleagues. He said that he is first of all a loyal "listener", listening to the opinions of all parties in the Olympic family, and then making judgments and choices. This may have something to do with his background in medicine. He said: "When treating a patient, you first listen to the patient describe the symptoms, then examine and analyze him and diagnose him, and finally decide on the treatment method. That's how I do things, I don't like to be dictatorial, I focus on teamwork. ”
Equally valuable is that as the head of the International Olympic Committee, Logue has always maintained the "true color" of athletes. Just hours after being elected IOC president, he announced that he would be staying in the Athletes' Village during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, not the IOC Headquarters Hotel. This practice he maintained until the London Olympics before leaving office.
The fairy tale "The Little Prince" is One of Logue's favorite books. In an interview before leaving office, the reporter asked Logue to comment on his IOC career, and he quoted a sentence from "The Little Prince" to answer: "Judging yourself is much more difficult than judging others, if you can judge yourself well, you are a real wise man." 」 ”