BUENOS AIRES: Newly-elected Thomas Bach is the first president of the IOC ever to have won Olympic gold, in his case in the team foil event in Montreal in 1976 writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

But Bach’s original ambitions were focused on football rather than fencing.

He let the sporting switch slip after being asked whether he had harboured presidential ambitions as far back as 1991 when he became a member of the IOC.

Bach indicated that the possibility did not cross his mind just as becoming a fencer had not been on his original youthful agenda.

He said: “When I started to be a fencer I wanted to become a football player. I was pushed there by my parents.

“I preferred playing football and the end of the long story was that my parents convinced me to go to the fencing only with the argument that I would get a good physical education to help me with my football career. Maybe you could say this was the same.”

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