Despite being found guilty of election interference in World Sailing, IOC member Ng Ser Miang remains a powerful force in the Olympic federation. With governance reforms in place, has anything really changed, or is sporting politics still business as usual? Report by Lars Jorgensen for Play the Game:

Whoever wins the presidential election at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in March 2025 will be the most powerful leader of the Olympic movement. However, IOC vice presidents also have significant power over sports governance that is rarely subject to public scrutiny and does not receive as much media attention as the power of the IOC president.

An important case in point is Ng Ser Miang, an IOC member from Singapore who was IOC vice president from 2009 to 2013 and again from 2020 to 2024.

In November 2022, World Sailing found Ser Miang guilty of abusing his positions as respectively IOC vice president and member of World Sailing’s Ethics Commission to interfere in the federation’s presidential election in November 2020 – an election campaign which has been framed in the media as ‘one of the most bitter ever staged by an Olympic International Federation’. – Full report