IOC president says no contact yet with Trump’s White House, will meet Vance at Winter Olympics

GENEVA (AP) — Olympic leader Kirsty Coventry said Wednesday she is yet to have formal contact with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration but is looking forward to meeting Vice President JD Vance in Milan next month at the Winter Games opening ceremony.

The International Olympic Committee’s first female president was elected 10 months ago and her first meeting with Trump is much anticipated in the sports world ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games.

The IOC and organizers in LA face diplomatic challenges in the next 2 ½ years with more than 200 national teams due to compete, including dozens whose fans and sports officials currently face visa bans or travel restrictions.

“We have not had any formal communication just yet with the White House,” Coventry told reporters in an online call before she travels next week to the Milan Cortina Winter Games that open Feb. 6.

The IOC president spoke in Lausanne while Trump also was in Switzerland, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) away, preparing to address world leaders in Davos.

Coventry said “we have seen the formal announcement” from the White House at the weekend about the U.S. delegation coming to Milan for the opening ceremony. Also expected are second lady Usha Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We look forward to meeting the vice president and his team that will be with him,” Coventry said.

Sports, not politics

Coventry’s first Olympics as IOC president approaches with Trump’s push to acquire Greenland from Denmark, a traditional ally, dominating the news agenda.

“It is not within our remit to comment on sovereignty and political conversations,” the IOC leader said. “We are a sport organization.”

Real world issues typically intrude on each modern Olympic Games, despite the IOC’s statutory duty to be politically neutral. Four years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Games, and began a full invasion of Ukraine four days after the closing ceremony, breaching the Olympic Truce.

Coventry said the IOC monitored moves in geopolitics because “it’s not just our job but our duty to the entire (Olympic) movement to really be on top of this and understand the ever-changing landscape.”

Her predecessor Thomas Bach used his keynote speech on the eve of the 2024 Paris Summer Games to warn of threats to the multilateral order in place for 80 years, and in which the IOC had forged closer ties to the United Nations.

“We are witnessing a new world order in the making,” Bach cautioned in Paris 18 months ago, to an audience that included French president Emmanuel Macron, and highlighted among the threats “narrow self-interests trumping the rule of law.”

Bach’s visit to the White House in June 2017 with an Olympic delegation meeting Trump is part of IOC lore that it did not go well.

Coventry could make her first eve-of-games keynote speech at an IOC gala event Feb. 2 at the storied Scala opera house in Milan.

IOC and FIFA

Coventry was asked Wednesday if she was “envious” of the bond FIFA leader Gianni Infantino forged with Trump ahead of the 2026 World Cup in men’s soccer that the U.S. will co-host.

Infantino was invited to Trump’s inauguration ceremony one year ago, makes repeated visits to the White House, and famously created a peace prize FIFA awarded to the U.S. president last month at the World Cup draw in Washington D.C.

Trump has said his three biggest events of this presidential term are the World Cup, the LA Olympics and marking 250 years of U.S. independence this year.

Calling Infantino, who also is an elected IOC member, “my dear friend and colleague,” Coventry suggested the Olympics was on a different timetable.

“He has got his FIFA World Cup in just a couple of months, so if we weren’t seeing that good relationship (with Trump) I’d be a little worried,” she said.

“Hopefully as we get closer to the (Los Angeles) games we will see relations continue and — as they have been with the IOC, with the Olympics movement in the United States — only getting stronger,” Coventry said.

Organizers of the LA Olympics are due in Milan in two weeks’ time to update IOC members on their plans.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics