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 Branded as the 'worst preparations ever by' International Olympic
Committee Vice President John Coates in April, work for the Rio
Games was now much more coordinated, said Bach, adding his colleague
has since revised his statements.
"Rio has made great progress in the last couple of months," Bach
told Reuters in an interview a day before his one-year anniversary
since taking over the IOC top job.
"You have seen the mayor and governor taking more responsibility and
showing great dynamism and working closely with the organizing
committee."
Bach, a German lawyer and former Olympic champion fencer, took over
from Jacques Rogge on Sept. 10, 2013 and was immediately thrown into
the deep end, trying to speed up preparations for the first summer
Games under his watch.
Rio organizers and government officials had until recently been
criticized for failing to coordinate work and responsibility
efficiently, leading to years of delays in almost every major
project for the Games, including the Deodoro park which will host
several sports.
The June/July soccer World Cup, which many feared could be faced
with transportation, infrastructure and security issues due partly
to similar delays in construction and organization as the Olympics,
was a successful event with no major problems and was hailed as one
of the best ever World Cup.
CONFIDENCE BOOST
"The Brazilians are having greater confidence after the successful
organization of the soccer World Cup. So there are many positive
indicators," Bach said.
"I am sure that now the IOC coordination commission which will go
there soon will note further progress. The facilities in Deodoro are
getting off the ground and the Olympic village is making great
progress."
In his whirlwind one year in charge which has seen him travel for
much of the time, Bach has also launched what he calls Agenda 2020,
an effort to overhaul the Olympics, including the bidding system and
making the Games more flexible in their structure and program.
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Among the changes he hopes will be adopted in an IOC session in Monaco in
December is making it easier to include and exclude sports from the
Games to make them more attractive to spectators, broadcasters and
sponsors.
Currently a sport needs to be voted in seven years before making its
Olympic appearance.
Tokyo, which will host the 2020 Games, is expected to be the first Games
to benefit from these changes with the likely re-introduction of
baseball and softball, hugely popular sports in Japan, in their program.
"What we could see in the last executive board meeting (in July) there
was good support for the ideas brought forward by the working groups and
the Olympic summit," said Bach.
"I hope that there will be taken some measures with regard to bidding
procedure, that we may get more flexibility of the composition of the
Olympic program," he said.
"I also hope very much the idea of the Olympic TV channel will be
approved," he said of his plans to set up the channel that would promote
Olympic sports in the years between the Games and help connect with
younger people.
(Editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
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