IOC presidential elections: Sebastian Coe and rivals target highest office in sport – live

Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr favourite of the contendersInside the Olympic conclave | And feel free to mail Simon

It is a big day in the sporting boardroom and backstage hustling department, with Thomas Bach stepping down as president of the International Olympic Committee after 12 years (and taking on the new role of Honorary President for Life: “When I was elected as President 12 years ago, my first words were ‘ouf’, and it’s the same now,” he said in response) and thus forcing them to find someone to replace him. Today we find out who that person will be.

There are seven candidates. All of them have published lengthy candidature documents, translated into several languages, which you can find via their individual pages on the IOC website, or from here. They are also profiled more succinctly at insidethegames here. But in very brief, they are:

This is pretty simple. At around 2pm GMT a secret ballot of all IOC members (there are currently 109 of them, including all seven candidates, though only 106 have turned up) will take place. Those standing for election, and their compatriots, are not allowed to vote until they or their compatriot are eliminated (though other associates of individual candidates are allowed to vote for them – controversially Samaranch’s family foundation is based in China and has two Chinese IOC members on the board). To be elected a candidate needs to win a simple majority of all votes cast. If nobody obtains a majority of the votes, whichever candidate has the fewest votes will be eliminated and a fresh round of voting will be held, and the process will be repeated until someone gets a majority.

If no candidate wins a majority the precise number of votes cast for each candidate in each round of voting will not immediately be made public, but if the two worst-performing candidates have the same number of votes there will be a head-to-head elimination vote-off, and if they also get the same number of votes in that the IOC president himself will decide which of them gets the boot. This is vanishingly unlikely but would be quite fun. As soon as someone is elected the full results of each round of voting will be published.

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