W hen the “FraggleS” had a problem, they would ask the “All-Knowing Garbage Heap,” which in that US series was marvelously brought to life and named Marjorie. They would then receive an answer to pressing problems of the Fraggle world. Nowadays and in real life people increasingly ask these Artificial Intelligence machines, which, although they do not yet understand telepathy like the All-Knowing Garbage Heap, nonetheless possess grand abilities.
I have now asked ChatGPT whether Thomas Bach was a good president of the International Olympic Committee, IOC. Then I asked Gemini and Grok. The result is sobering: Thomas Bach’s tenure was “complex and multifaceted,” as a universal know-it-all, this time Gemini, informs me. The other smart alecks put it this way: whether Thomas Bach was a good president depended on the perspective. The AI machines have understood this very well: They are open in all directions, in every respect flexible, purely opportunistic service providers and thus indispensable in the toolbox of postmodernism. Anything goes.
To counteract this trend of ruinous arbitrariness, I here take a stand and say: Thomas Bach was not a good IOC president. He was, for example, the type who did not confront it. I have asked him several times for an interview with this newspaper and pointed out that it might be interesting to talk to a paper that, in the German-speaking world, has afforded itself a dedicated Olympics column. But Bach’s press spokesman, Christian Klaue, has always declined. Too busy, the boss and so on. What one writes, after all. Klaue, at least at the beginning, apparently always read the Olympyada columns and immediately objected to small inaccuracies.
Surprising Departure
I haven’t heard much from him in a very long time. Does that mean that he no longer reads – or that there is nothing left to fault? Be that as it may, back to Thomas Bach we go and broaden the perspective a bit. The former fencer was, like the AI machines, a man for all occasions. He could adapt to situations like a chameleon of the surroundings, ingratiating himself with people. With Putin he appeared putinesk. With Xi Jinping pro-China. He spoke the language of the powerful. He stroked the bellies of the influential. As the autocratic trend within the IOC ended and the Olympic Committee moved back toward the West, that too was only a turn for Thomas Bach, a motor-like movement.
The funny thing is that he did not see himself merely on par with the political powers of this world, no, as IOC president he located himself above them – as a supranational big shot, as the world’s biggest sports buff, who does not have to descend into the nitty-gritty of realpolitik, but parades above them and distributes games like gifts to the attention-seeking politicians.
Thomas Bach could adapt himself like a chameleon. With Putin he presented himself as Putinesque. With Xi Jinping pro-China
So I personally expected that Thomas Bach would continue, into another term, because this existence as savior is too appealing. But in the summer of last year, Thomas Bach said that he would adhere to the Olympic Charter. He is stepping down.
That surprised me, because the totalitarian principle is like a drug; one can hardly free oneself from it. Thomas Bach is now 71. In the Olympic world he is still a relatively young figure. Given his fantastic mobility, one need not worry about the German. What happens next? Yada-yada-yada, well, you know.
