NBA veteran Pau Gasol has been voted by his fellow Tokyo Games athletes to represent them as a member of the International Olympic Committee.
The IOC says Gasol got the most votes among 30 candidates for four vacant seats on the Olympic body. The results were announced the day after Gasol and Spain lost in the quarterfinals to the United States.
Gasol will be an IOC member for seven years through the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, where he won two NBA titles with the Lakers.
The three-time Olympic medalist got 1,888 votes of more than 6,800 cast by athletes at Tokyo.
The other new members are cyclist Maja Martyna Wloszczowska of Poland, Italian swimmer Federica Pellegrini and Japan’s Yuki Ota, from IOC president Thomas Bach’s sport of fencing.
The losing candidates include Danka Bartekova, the Slovakian shooter who has been an IOC member since 2012, men’s high jump gold medalist Mutaz Barshim of Qatar, and Australian swimmer Cate Campbell who won two relay gold medals in Tokyo.
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