President of the IOC from 1946 to 1952

J. Sigfrid Edstrom, born on 21 November 1870, was one of the best known personalities in the world of sport. While a student in Gothenburg, Mr Edstr?m went in for athletics and ran the 100 m in 11 seconds. After some years in Zurich, where he attended the Federal Institute of Technology, he was entrusted with important tasks in the sports movement in Sweden.

In the international field, he was one of the organisers of the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912, and also participated in the 1908, 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932 and 1936 Games as head of the Swedish delegation. At the 1912 Olympic Games he took the lead in founding the International Amateur Athletics Federation and was elected its first President (1913), an office which he held until 1946.

In 1920 he was elected as a member of the International Olympic Committee in Sweden. One year later he was elected to the Executive Board of the IOC and then as Vice-President (1931-1946). In his capacity as Vice-President he became head of the International Olympic Committee in 1946, on the death of the President, Count de Baillet-Latour. All through the hostilities of the Second World War, since he lived in a neutral country, he managed to keep in contact with the members of the International Olympic Committee, and in 1945 convened the first post-war meeting of the Executive Board, which accepted the invitation from London and selected this city to stage the Games of the XIV Olympiad.

In 1946 he was elected President by acclamation at the first post-war meeting of the IOC in Lausanne. He retired in 1952 at the age of 82 with the title of Life Honorary President of the International Olympic Committee.