MONTREAL — International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach made an emotional return on Thursday to the city where the former fencer won a gold medal for West Germany in the team foil event at the 1976 Games.
Bach was named an honorary citizen of Montreal and was given a key to the city by mayor Denis Coderre at a City Hall ceremony.
“As you can imagine, my emotions are strong this morning,” said Bach. “I’m very pleased to receive this distinction from the city where I achieved my dream a certain time ago.
“It is like the emotions I felt on 25 July, 1976 when, with my teammates, I won the gold medal in foil a few kilometres from here at the University of Montreal.”
Bach later spoke at a fund-raising luncheon and was later to unveil the Olympics rings logo atop the new offices of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
Nearly 300 Olympic athletes were to attend the opening. Most were Canadian, but they also included Nadia Comanice, the Romanian gymnast who stole the show at the 1976 Games with three gold medals. American diver Greg Louganis, who was on a silver medal as a 16-year-old that year, was also there.
Montreal is the first city outside of IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to be given the right to display the Olympic Rings as part of a policy of openness brought in after Bach took office in 2013.
Bach said having the rings displayed showed that “being an Olympic city doesn’t end with the closing ceremonies, but that the Games leave a great legacy to a city and its citizens. For me, it is very moving that Montreal becomes the first Olympic city that will benefit from this reform.”
He was in Toronto earlier in the week and was to retur there for the opening ceremonies of the Pan AM games on Friday night.