The International Equestrian Federation President, who joined the IOC in 2017, led a small cohort which offered worthwhile interventions during last week’s virtual Session.

As other members lined up to praise Thomas Bach and the work of the IOC without even the merest whiff of dissent - an almost identical scenario to the first remote Session last July - De Vos and a handful of others chose a different tack.

Rather than pander to the leadership and join the gushing display of adulation for Bach, De Vos used his contributions to suggest improvements and to ask questions plenty of stakeholders in the Olympic Movement would want to know the answers to.

One such intervention, which came during a discussion on governance towards the end of a protracted debate on the IOC’s new strategic plan, Olympic Agenda 2020+5, caught my attention.

De Vos called for tougher sanctions to be imposed on organisations and International Federations who fail to follow "good governance" and suggested a move away from recommendations into implementation of such standards.

It is worth noting here that the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), the umbrella body for summer sports, has conducted three reviews of its members since 2017.

The findings are published - this time each Federation was placed in one of four tiers - and they provide an interesting insight into governance within sports organisations.

But that is as far as it goes. There is no mechanism or consequences in place for those who fall foul of the requirements.

"What we do is identify best practice, evaluate performance against a standard and then report and provide support for improvement which we have seen in every iteration of our assessment exercise across the IFs," said ASOIF executive director Andrew Ryan.

"We have independent, public authority and IOC representation within our governance taskforce which manages this work.

"Our methodology had been widely endorsed and adopted internationally beyond our membership but sanctioning is not our role nor within our remit."

This is not a criticism of ASOIF, but should it not be the role of someone to not only monitor bad governance, of which there have been countless examples in recent years, but punish them for it?

Under the current model, Federations can essentially act as they please without fear of punishment, and there does not seem to be any desire or inclination from the powers-that-be to properly investigate organisations and their governance standards.

The only body with any real sanctioning power is the IOC, which has stripping a sport of its Olympic status in its armoury but has chosen to use it sparingly, despite the numerous examples of poor governance within sport.

Only the International Boxing Association has lost its recognition in recent memory and that was supposedly because of a combination of factors and not just because of substandard governance.

The International Weightlifting Federation could soon follow, but few would argue it and AIBA are the only two organisations governing Olympic sports who have failed to exhibit the "good governance" so championed by the IOC.

In fact, the IOC itself is hardly living up to its own standards. You need only look at the list of IOC members, two of which - Ireland’s Patrick Hickey and Kuwaiti powerbroker Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah - remain "self-suspended", a term that has very little legal meaning, to find an example.

Despite what Bach may believe, the fawning over him and the administration demonstrated during the Session is also hardly conducive to good governance.

Surely healthy, democratic debate and even argument is better than creating a culture where the vast majority of members are too petrified to challenge the organisation in any way?

It was also interesting to hear Bach decrying "people living in their own echo chambers" during the Session while simultaneously presiding over the biggest one of them all.

When it comes to governance, most Federations and even the IOC are reactive rather than proactive, seemingly only making improvements in response to a scandal.

Here is a thought: maybe a proactive approach would stop such crises from occurring in the first place.

It is here where a sanctioning mechanism would help. With the threat of punishments, Federations would be more motivated to constantly reform, instead of only doing so once their leadership has been embroiled in a corruption scandal, for example.

In an ideal world, this would be run by an independent regulator. But this is governance of international sport, where the wheels turn slowly and where its top brass are reluctant to devolve any power to outsiders.

So do not expect De Vos' perfectly legitimate recommendation to be acted on any time soon.

The ISSF World Championships in Russia - a conflict of interest?

I was drawn to the topic of governance by confirmation from the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) that its 2022 World Championships will take place at a venue owned by its President, Russian billionaire Vladimir Lisin.

The ISSF this week agreed to keep the event in Russia, despite the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling ordering Federations to strip World Championships from the country as punishment for the "cover-up of the cover-up" of the manipulated Moscow Laboratory data.

But I was more struck by the fact that the Championships had been awarded to a complex owned by Russia’s richest man and who just happens to be the ISSF President - Foxlodge in Ignatovo, located just outside of Moscow.

It appears to be a cut-and-dry case of a conflict of interest, but the ISSF secretary general Alexander Ratner, unsurprisingly, does not see it that way.

"Where may the conflict of interest come from?" Ratner told insidethegames.

"Neither Foxlodge, nor, naturally, the President have any financial interest."

It had also been suggested that the venue could have been in line to receive €6 million (£5.2 million/$7.2 million) in damages from the ISSF if the World Championships were moved because of the CAS verdict.

"Why should private business throw money away if it fulfils all its obligations?" Ratner added.

"In addition, it is about reimbursement of investment in case of failure of the event due to the fault of the customer, and not about penalties or fines. 

"These are the usual terms of any contract for any event, wherever it takes place."