JOHN COATES RE-ELECTED AS ICAS PRESIDENT

On the occasion of its 43rd meeting, held in Lausanne (Switzerland), the International Council of Arbitration for Sport (ICAS) elected Mr John Coates (Australia) as President of ICAS for the period 2015-2018.

Mr Coates has been a member of ICAS since the creation of the Council in 1994. He became the 3rd ICAS President in 2010, succeeding Judge Kéba Mbaye (Senegal, 1994-2007), founder and first President of ICAS, and Mr Mino Auletta (Italy, 2007-2010).

Mr Coates is a lawyer from Sydney. He is President of the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) and Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

At the same meeting, the ICAS also elected its two Vice-Presidents: Mr Michael Lenard (United States) and Mrs Tjasa Andrée-Prosenc (Slovenia). Mr Lenard, lawyer, is an Olympian in handball (1984), former Vice-President of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and former Vice-Chairman of the USOC Athlete Commission.

Mrs Andrée-Prosenc, lawyer, was a national champion in figure and roller skating; she is a Council member of the International Skating Union (ISU), an ISU judge, referee and technical delegate at the Olympic Games and Executive Board Member of the NOC of Slovenia.

John Coates, President of ICAS

The presidents of the CAS arbitration divisions have also been elected:

Ordinary Arbitration Division:
President: Mr Nabil Elaraby (Egypt); Mr Elaraby is a former Judge of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and former Foreign Minister of Egypt.

Deputy President: Ms Tricia Smith (Canada); Ms Smith, lawyer, is a four-time Olympian in rowing (1976-1988; silver medallist in 1984), gold medallist at the Commonwealth Games 1986 and winner of seven world championship medals; she is Vice-President of both the International Rowing Federation (FISA) and the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC).

Appeals Arbitration Division:
President: Ms Corinne Schmidhauser (Switzerland); Ms Schmidhauser, lawyer, is an Olympian in alpine skiing (1988) and winner of the 1987 World Cup in slalom; she is the President of the Swiss Anti-doping Foundation.

Deputy President: Mr Göran Petersson (Sweden); Mr Petersson, lawyer, is a former national champion in sailing and a former Chief Judge at the Olympic Games and at the America’s Cup; he chaired the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) between 2004 and 2012 and, in this capacity, was an IOC Member from 2009 to 2012.

The President, the Vice-Presidents and the President of each CAS arbitration division form the ICAS Board.

The Secretary General of ICAS and of CAS is Mr Matthieu Reeb (Switzerland). He is responsible for the management of the CAS Court Office based in Lausanne and composed of 25 employees.

The ICAS is composed of 20 persons. In addition to the 7 above-mentioned members, the current composition of ICAS is the following (in alphabetical order):

 Dr Abdullah Al Hayyan (Kuwait), Professor of Law, member of the FINA Ethics Committee

 Mr Patrick Baumann (Switzerland), Lawyer, FIBA Secretary General, IOC Member

 Mr Scott Blackmun (USA), Lawyer, CEO US Olympic Committee

 Ms Alexandra Brilliantova (Russia), Lawyer, Head of Legal, Russian Olympic Committee

 Mr Miguel Cardenal (Spain), Professor of Law, State Secretary for Education, Culture & Sport

 Ms Moya Dodd (Australia), Lawyer, Member of FIFA and of AFC Executive Committees

 Judge Ivo Eusebio (Switzerland), Federal Judge, Member of IIHF Disciplinary Committee

 Judge Ellen Gracie Northfleet (Brazil), Former Chief Justice of Federal Supreme Court in Brazil

 Ms Carole Malinvaud (France), Lawyer and specialist in international commercial law and arbitration

 Justice Yvonne Mokgoro (South Africa), Advocate for Social Cohesion in South Africa, former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

 Mr Richard W. Pound (Canada), Lawyer, IOC member, Olympian in swimming (1960), member of WADA Foundation Board

 Justice Wilhelmina Thomassen (Netherlands), former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands

 Judge Xue Hanqin (China), Judge of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The responsibility of the ICAS is to facilitate the resolution of sports-related disputes through arbitration or mediation conducted by independent arbitrators/mediators.

Among its duties, the ICAS manages the administration and finances of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), promotes sports arbitration generally and sets up special CAS divisions on the occasion of multi-sports events, such as the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games, the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro. The ICAS is composed of 20 international lawyers coming equally from the sports movement and from the arbitration world or international judiciary.

The CAS has on its lists 330 arbitrators and 60 mediators from 90 different countries. It registers more than 400 cases every year.

2020 Tokyo Olympic Games: Japan boosting efforts for inclusion of Baseball and Softball

Tokyo 2020 chief, Yoshiro Mori, says baseball/softball in 2020 would be a “big plus”.

As support for baseball and softball to be included in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games continues to mount across Japan, with a growing chorus from all parts of the globe, the political group consisting of 67 Diet Members campaigning for baseball and softball at the Olympic Games assembled in Tokyo for the second time in a month last Tuesday, November 18 in the Japanese Diet.

Kazuhiro Tawa, Senior Advisor of Baseball Federation of Japan, and Taeko Utsugi, Vice President of Japan Softball Association — as well as World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) executive member — made presentations to the supportive Diet members, exchanged ideas and were encouraged to expand the baseball/softball Olympic inclusion campaign.

The Diet Federation members from the LDP of Japan recognized the ongoing work by the baseball/softball family, including the screening of the promotional video on the stadium jumbotron during the recent WBSC-sanctioned “Japan Series” between the top-ranked Japanese National Baseball Team, Samurai Japan, and the MLB All-Stars at the Tokyo Dome, and University/High School Baseball Championship at Meiji Jingu Stadium.

Immediately following the Diet meeting, the 40-proposal Olympic Agenda 2020 reform programme was released from the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The potential reforms being introduced by the IOC would allow host cities to propose the inclusion of one or more events for their games — a move which would clear the way for baseball and softball to be included in the 2020 Games.

IOC Vice-President John Coates, who was visiting Tokyo with his IOC Coordination Commission team, and Chairman of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Organizing Committee Yoshiro Mori, spoke to the media on how the IOC President Thomas Bach’s reform agenda could affect planning for Tokyo 2020.

“In the case of Japan, including baseball and softball would be a great idea,” Mori said at the news conference last Wednesday. “The two sports are very popular in Japan and having them on the program would be a big plus.”

World Baseball Softball Confederation

The Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms will be put to a vote by the full IOC membership at a special session in Monaco on December 8-9.

The first/last bid from the new world governing body, WBSC, to include baseball and softball in the 2020 Olympic Games was at the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires, Argentina in September 2013, where wrestling was voted back onto the official Olympic Programme the day after Tokyo was announced as the host of the 2020 Olympic Games.