ISU Members to Reelect Jae Youl Kim Unopposed for Second Term

Jae Youl Kim is scheduled to be reelected unopposed by International Skating Union members for a second four-year term on Friday, June 12, 2026. The vote follows congress meetings held in Tenerife and comes months after Kim was elevated to the International Olympic Committee’s executive board representing winter sports.

Kim won his first ISU presidential election in 2026 on the eve of the Milan Cortina Olympics.

U.S. figure skater Ilia Malinin falling out of the medals, and Dutch speed skater Jutta Leerdam competing. “Milan was a huge success, we couldn’t ask for anything better,” Kim told The Associated Press.

Kim is the first skating representative on the IOC executive board in 18 years. He earned the trust of the eight-sport Winter Olympic Federations group against campaigning by Johan Eliasch, who was ousted Thursday as president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation after an election decided by a single vote. Kim grew up skating on frozen lakes and ponds in Seoul.

He studied at Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford universities, worked at Samsung, led the Korea Skating Union, and joined the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games organizing committee. In 2022 he became the ISU’s first non-European president after 130 years of European leadership. 4 million.

1 million in travel cost support. Russian athletes were permitted to try to qualify for and compete at the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympics, though they have been excluded from ISU championships other than the Olympics for five years due to the invasion of Ukraine. Kim said a freshly composed ISU Council will look at the right time to decide on full return of Russian skaters.

“I want to be able to look back at ISU 20 years from now and then I want to be able to say, ‘Hey, we did the right thing,’” Kim said.