The International Olympic Committee is committed to increase its financial assistance to GSSE countries with the aim of seeing more small nations involved.
Yesterday, IOC president Thomas Bach met with members of the media in San Marino and spoke about the key role the GSSE have in the Olympic movement, adding they were committed to keep assisting the athletes and federations from the small nations.
“We want to maintain our backing to our members from small countries and even strengthen our mechanisms because it’s so important that we ensure all those within the IOC fold have adequate tools to make progress,” Bach said.
“During my term at the IOC I would like to see one record to be broken – that of the number of National Olympic Committees with a medal at the Olympic Games. Hopefully, this can be achieved at the Tokyo Games in 2020.”
Bach said the IOC has already agreed to increase the budget for the Olympic Solidarity Scholarship to more than half a billion dollars for the term between 2017 and 2020.
“Next month, most of the officials from the GSSE will be travelling to our headquarters in Lausanne and we shall discuss the ways where we can strengthen our assistance to them,” Bach said.
The GSSE have progressed significantly since their birth in San Marino back in 1985 with Montenegro becoming the latest members in 2013 as the number of sport in programme also increased significantly.
Bach said the GSSE was a great experience to the athletes but warned organisers against the risk of more expansion for the time being.
“The GSSE do not fall directly under the jurisdiction of the IOC but if I can give an advice it’s not necessarily healthy for these Games to get bigger and bigger in the next few years,” Bach said.
“The Games already have a particular charm, created by the closeness that exists between the participating countries on the sporting arena. I feel that if more countries had to compete all this would disappear.
“The secret behind the success of the GSSE was that every organiser has taken the right approach despite the different size of the participating countries and I hope that they can keep this in future.”
Bach also talked about the selection process for the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games and the hosting rights process that follows.
“In life you can never say never,” Bach said.
“At present we are very happy to have two very important projects from two big countries like France and the United States and it will be a very interesting battle.
“I’m sorry for Rome who have withdrawn for the race for 2024 but that is part of the history and we look forward to the future which is Paris and Los Angeles.”