The COC (Catalan Olympic Committee) has today presented the letter it will send to Thomas Bach, president of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to ask to join if 'yes' wins in the referendum on 1st October. Gerard Figueras, director secretary of Sport for the Catalan government and Gerard Esteva, president of the COC, have signed the text with which they aim to gain international recognition. The presentation took place this afternoon at the Museum and Centre of Sport Studies.
In three pages, the two institutions detail the Olympic tradition of Catalonia, explain the current political situation and describe their "desire" to be present in international competitions. "In the case that we become an [independent] State, we have everything ready for Catalan sport to be international. The Catalan Olympic Committee is a private body that works alongside the Catalan government and the whole public administrative structure. The Catalan government has 95% of the public structures to correctly develop sport in a country. Everything's ready to be approved in very little time," said Figueras.
Esteva wanted to reject any pressure on athletes to decide on one flag or the other. "We have to be more respectful with sportspeople. There's the option to have dual nationality. In international sport that works as follows: sportspeople have to decide, without pressure, who they compete for. We believe that an independent State benefits Catalan sport and we have many studies that support this idea. Here everyone has to be free to choose between the two options", said the president of the COC before assuring that, with an independent Catalonia, "the Spanish state also wins because more athletes will take part in the Olympic Games and they will win more medals".
Moreover, Esteva remarked that it's not sportspeople themselves who have to take positions on the request to join the IOC. "This document isn't a manifesto and sportspeople haven't been asked to adhere to it."
The COC has already asked the IOC for formal recognition once before, in March 1991. The objective that time was to participate in the 1992 Barcelona Games with a Catalan delegation.