'Olympic Games are not about building venues'

IOC vice-president Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr smiles while talking about being involved with the apex sports body for over two decades and "exposed to this world as a child".

- Rutvick Mehta

So, for him running for its presidency in next week's election is a "privilege".

In this interview with HT, the Spaniard, son of the late Juan Antonio Samaranch, IOC president from 1980 to 2001, discusses India's universal appeal in the Olympic movement and its 2036 Games bid. Excerpts:

Staging an Olympics is an expensive exercise. We've seen countries pull out of hosting the Commonwealth Games because of that. How can it be addressed?

This issue became obvious a decade ago, that we were seeing a lack of interest or a lack of possibility by many territories and cities to organise the Games. We even found ourselves with only two candidates for the 2024 Games, but both very strong. The team back then was courageous enough to double award the Games to Paris (2024) and LA (2028). The situation today is different. Many territories, not least India, are pushing to organise the Games for 2036 or 2040. With the Agenda 2020 and 2020+5, which made it less expensive and more reasonable to organise the Games, we're going into a new world, one that makes more financial sense now.

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