Jacques Rogge: biography

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Jacques Rogge is a Belgian athlete and physician who served as President of the International Olympic Committee from 2001 to 2013

Charm

Rogge, of course, could use his official position to spend more time with such attractive athletes as Lerin Franco, but it was not in his spirit. Firstly, he has a wife, Ann, from the time when he himself participated in the Olympics. Already in his 70s, his loy alty as a husband and honorary president of the IOC has always been to care for the games and his family, which also includes a couple of grown children.

Despite his age and marital status, Jacques Rogge still makes an effort to associate himself with much younger athletes. At the 2002 Winter Olympics in S alt Lake City, he became the first functionary to stay in a room in the Olympic Village instead of a hotel.

Rogge has amassed an impressive art collection. According to him, here he is more abstract than romantic.

Success story

Jacques Rogge was the most important person in the sport. As President of the IOC, he was responsible for the Olympic Games, a position he held from 2001 to 2013. The former surgeonwith the necessary sporting experience to fit into his position – Rogge has competed in four Olympics and three World Championships as a yachtsman and 10 international championships as a Belgian rugby player.

The IOC President's greatest contribution was to make important changes to the Olympic system to combat cheating and doping by athletes. While no system is perfect, he has shown that he is not patronizing and is willing to punish anyone who breaks the rules, including some of his allies. Critics may say that Jacques Rogge took a too hard line against doping, but he also believed that athletes can improve and deserve a second chance. In addition, early in his tenure at the head of the IOC, he faced a corruption and doping scandal at the S alt Lake City Olympics that could have irreparably damaged his cause, but he handled this difficult situation with flying colors.

The future IOC president was born in Ghent, Belgium on 05/02/42. He moved to England at a young age and eventually became fluent in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch. Rogge also spent a lot of time on the rugby field. Upon returning to his homeland, he continued to play and subsequently played for the national team of his country 10 times.

However, this is not all that Jacques Rogge has achieved. The sport in which he has achieved the greatest success is yachting. He became world champion andfinished in the top three twice more. Jacques Rogge competed at three Olympics in a row in yachting competitions - in 1968-1976

The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich left an indelible mark on the fate of the Belgian yachtsman. It was there that a group of Palestinians killed several Israeli athletes, and this attack became a sad event in his life.

Violation of the boycott of the 1980 Olympics

1980 marked another memorable event in the life of an Olympic functionary, this time not as tragic as in Munich. Having a sports background, Jacques Rogge was involved in the preparation of the Belgian national team. Because of the hostile relations between Russia and NATO, the government did not want to send an Olympic team to the country that occupied Afghanistan a year earlier, but Jacques Rogge went against his own political leadership so that his compatriots, no matter what, could take part in this event. It is clear that the Belgian athlete had the skills of a born leader.

As a result of the events of 1980, the focus of Rogge's career shifted to medicine, although he did not lose sight of the field of sports administration. Jacques received a degree in sports medicine from the University of Ghent and found a job as an orthopedic surgeon. For three years he collaborated with the Belgian Olympic Committee and in 1989 was elected Chairman of the European OC, which he remained until 2001

In 1991, Rogge became a member of the IOC, and in 1998 he became a representative of the executive board. He played a key role in coordinating the SummerOlympics in Sydney 2000 and helped prepare in 2004 in Athens.

Jacques Rogge - President of the IOC

In 2001, Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the International Olympic Committee, decided not to seek re-election to his post at the end of his term. In July of the same year, Jacques Rogge was elected instead of him, thanks to his successful Olympic experience as an athlete and official representative of this organization. He left his medical practice and moved to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne in Switzerland.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Rogge was given the power to stop the Olympic Games without a committee vote. The President promised not to resort to these extreme measures and never did.

Shortly after, during his first Olympics in S alt Lake City, USA, in 2002, he faced a scandal over bribes taken by some of his fellow officials. The eighth president in the 107-year history of the IOC promised to purge the ranks of the Committee's staff in particular and sports in general, starting a decisive fight against corruption and doping.

While Jacques Rogge caused resentment for his support of Beijing at the 2008 Olympics, he was instrumental in enacting a number of changes to international competition. The IOC president has reduced the number of Olympians to just over 10,000 and launched a new doping control program that tests athletes all year round, including in othercountries. He even went so far as to punish the French and Russian participants, although these countries were his main allies. This had a huge impact on the Olympic Games - many athletes, such as Marion Jones, were accused of doping.

In an attempt to popularize the Olympics among the younger generation, Rogge promoted the inclusion of youth sports such as snowboarding, which debuted in Turin in 2006, or bicycle motocross, which started in Beijing in 2008. In 2007, he added the Youth Olympic Games to the calendar, which have been held since 2010

Departure from the IOC and awards

Rogge's term came to an end at the 125th IOC meeting in Buenos Aires. On September 10, 2013, he was replaced by the representative of Germany, Thomas Bach, and he became Honorary President.

Jacques Rogge is a holder of orders from France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Romania, Ukraine, Austria, South Africa, Lithuania and Russia, as well as the holder of honorary titles from the Universities of Ghent, Leuven, Budapest and Lausanne.