AIBA President Dr Ching-Kuo Wu was the keynote speaker at the 56th Session for Young Participants at the International Olympic Academy, where he was also honoured to receive the Olympia Award for his services to the Olympic Movement. The annual two-week workshop brings together large groups of international students, athletes and those active in sports or their local National Olympic Committees and National Olympic Associations, and Dr Wu addressed the audience on the contribution Olympism has made, and continues to make, to world peace.

“More than 30 years ago, my involvement in the inclusion of Chinese Taipei into the IOC impressed upon me what sports could achieve for peace, and I was thus inspired to contribute whatever I could in this course and made it my life-long mission when I was elected IOC Member in 1988,” he told the assembled audience.

The AIBA President talked of his admiration for former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, a man with a unique vision of the power of sport in uniting the world and who entrusted Dr Wu with some 15,000 items of Olympic history before passing away in 2010. Dr Wu has since opened four Olympic museums in six years to house the items and help share his own belief in the power of Olympism, and witnessed first-hand the impact they have had on firing the imaginations of prospective young athletes the world over.  In April 2016, the President of AIBA, has been appointed Chair of Culture and Olympic Heritage Commission of the International Olympic Committee by President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach.