The International Olympic Committee began in 1894 as the brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, widely considered the father of the modern Olympics. Demetrios Vikelas, who co-founded the modern Games in his homeland of Greece, became the committee's first president.
The committee's 100-plus members organize all modern Games, which means overseeing more than 200 national Olympic committees and dozens of international sports federations. They meet annually at the Olympic Sessions , as well as in extreme circumstances if the president or a third of committee members request additional assemblies. The IOC also manages athletics-related international humanitarian programs. Since 2009, the IOC has enjoyed a permanent invitation to observe the United Nations General Assembly, where committee representatives are allowed to take the floor and involve the committee in the official agenda.
Most familiarly to the general public, the IOC is directly responsible for awarding Olympic medals. In addition to the standard gold, bronze and silver for each event, the committee also doles out special awards to individuals, institutions and municipalities that have been particularly key to the Olympic movement.
In non-Olympic years, the committee busies itself by deciding where future Games will be held, determining which sports to include and working with each Olympic sport's international governing body.
Who's in charge
Current IOC president Thomas Bach was elected in 2013, and he is the ninth person to hold the title.
IOC presidents serve an eight-year initial term, which can be renewed for an additional four years. As such, by the Olympics' next showing in 2028, in Los Angeles , the committee will be headed by a new president, elected by a secret ballot process at the committee's annual convention.
In addition to serving as figurehead for the organization, the committee president can make decisions on behalf of the IOC when the session or executive board can't do so. The president is also part of the executive board, along with four vice-presidents and 10 more IOC members.
What do IOC funds look like
Unsurprisingly for a group focused on intricate international events, the IOC collects and spends as much money as some small countries. Most of its money comes from selling broadcast rights, with the remaining funds coming primarily from marketing deals.
As a nonprofit, the IOC uses about 10% of its revenue on operational costs, including committee leaders' salaries. Tax records filed in 2023 show over $2 billion in expenses for the year, with $2.4 billion in net assets.
One of the committee's key expenditures this century is funding the World Anti-Doping Association, which draws about half its funds from the IOC and half from international governments.
Discipline
During many Olympic Games, the committee largely stays off-camera, except when monitoring events and doling out medals. But in the years plagued by controversy, it generally is the IOC's responsibility to respond to -- and absorb criticism for -- contention between countries, athletes and organizers.
The IOC often has been accused of only sporadically enforcing its own rules -- and being slow to update them.
One of the Olympics' original key tenets was that the Games were reserved for amateur athletes, but social norms meant that a growing number of athletes competed professionally instead of relying on other means. The Soviet Union publicly identified its competitors as students or workers, but it was no secret that the government paid them to train full time. Meanwhile, other countries were forbidden from including any professional athletes on Olympic teams, even if they weren't being paid for their inclusion. Canada withdrew its hockey team from international competition to protest the double standard, which was gradually relaxed in the 1970s and completely eradicated in 1988.
When doping became more common among athletes, the IOC periodically shifted its stance on when and how to punish athletes and countries that had tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.
The IOC faced even more flak than usual surrounding the 2024 Summer Games.
Long before athletes arrived in Paris, public disgust erupted when convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde was announced as an official member of the Dutch beach volleyball team. When an English judge sentenced him, he announced that van de Velde's Olympic hopes "now lie as a shattered dream." The Dutch Volleyball Association publicly backed him, and the IOC deferred to that federation to much public chagrin.
As the closing ceremony came to an end, sports fans swarmed around a second dayslong controversy. A scoring scandal left confusion over three gymnasts' scores on floor. When final contestant Jordan Chiles of the United States first received her score, the Romanian team briefly celebrated as her lower score meant its two gymnasts had tied for third place.
When Chiles' coach inquired about the scoring, judges bumped her routine's difficulty value up by .1, which pushed the Romanians out of contention, as Chiles took the bronze medal. Romania later filed its own appeal. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (which was founded as a subset of the IOC but has since made moves to separate itself) decided that the American appeal was invalid because it had been submitted four seconds past the deadline. The International Federation of Gymnastics concurred and dropped Chiles to fifth place.
While the IOC didn't make the decision, its authority over medals meant it was in charge of perhaps the most unprecedented chapter of the saga: demanding Chiles relinquish her bronze medal so that it could be handed over to Romania. Many expected the committee to simply send additional medals to Romania, and reports indicate that Romania had agreed to that solution. Instead, Chiles became the first athlete to be stripped of a medal due to a judging error (as opposed to an athlete cheating). USA Gymnastics announced it has since sent extra evidence to the court -- including video showing that the initial inquiry on Chiles' score had begun before the deadline -- but that an arbitration panel won't reconsider the court's decision .
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