It was there, almost a decade ago now, that I witnessed the IOC functioning for just about the last time as, in my view, it really could and should - that is to say as the United Nations of sport.

The 2013 IOC Session in the Argentinean city was the most significant since the Moscow 2001 event that delivered the Summer Games to Beijing and elected Jacques Rogge to the sports body’s Presidency.

The South American meeting would see three fairly momentous decisions taken - and in each case, an element of doubt hung over the outcome.

Firstly, the 2020 Summer Olympic host would be selected, with Tokyo, Madrid and, yes, Istanbul engaged in a fascinating, twisting and turning contest in which there could be only one winner.

IOC members then had to decide whether the ancient sport of wrestling should remain on the Olympic programme.

Finally, they needed to elect Rogge’s successor; in this case, the main element of doubt was whether Bach would win in the first round. (He didn’t.)

What made the process so enthralling for the large global audience that had tracked it like a favourite soap opera was that 100 or so diverse, on the whole respected individuals from around the world, most with significant sports expertise, would be making their own personal decisions on three matters of great importance for the biggest, most complex sports extravaganza humanity has devised.

Their motivations would not, in all cases, be pure as the driven snow; I am not claiming the process was perfect: Olympism has always been characterised, so far as I can see, by a similar system of favour-trading to that underpinning international affairs in general. The IOC was never Utopia.

But the sheer number of individual choices feeding into the overall results, and the multiplicity of reasons influencing how each member cast the up to seven votes that were ultimately required of them offered what in my judgement amounts to a pretty solid assurance that sensible decisions would be taken.

It went almost without saying in those days that each of the dozen entities striving to win one election or the other had been subjected to rigorous public scrutiny calculated to flush out obfuscations or weakness.

Sure enough, sensible decisions were duly reached, although I can appreciate Turks might not think so.

Whatever other factors may have swayed certain votes, Tokyo won the right to stage the 2020 Games because of an impulse among members that they should probably play things safe after sticking their necks out with Rio 2016.

That and the inspired coup de théâtre of Princess Hisako of Takamado’s arrival in Argentina, and her astonishingly sure-footed contribution once she got there.

These attributes outweighed Istanbul’s wow factor and Madrid’s convenience.

Having installed new leadership, wrestling was deemed worthy of retaining its Olympic place at the end of a day described by said new leader, Nenad Lalović, as "the most important in the 3,000-year history of our sport".

That too seemed sensible: no sport has stronger Olympic DNA.

Bach too appeared to most the sensible choice, as a safe pair of hands who knew the international sports movement in every detail and would work morning, noon and night while in the President’s office.

One cannot help but wonder in retrospect, however, whether the IOC and its main event would be in better shape today had members plumped unexpectedly for Bach’s main rival, Richard Carrión of Puerto Rico, and the less hands-on approach I believe he would have brought to the role.

Bach has centralised decision-making to what I would argue is an excessive degree, even allowing for the increasingly giddy pace at which the world moves, reducing the IOC in large part to an echo-chamber and rubber stamp.

No leader gets every call right, so this does not strike me as an especially healthy state of affairs, no matter how wasteful and time-consuming the old ways might have appeared.

No city has been more persistent in its desire to host a 21st-century Summer Olympic Games than Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, one-time imperial capital of Byzantium.

If it is at last to succeed, the process it will need to navigate is very different from the one that culminated in Buenos Aires, having been made less rigidly timetabled and, as I have repeatedly argued, more opaque.

Olympic bid journalism seems to me as a result to be acquiring some of the speculative timbre of old-style Kremlinology, as reporters struggle to work out what is really going on from limited external signs.

insidethegames said that Kasapoğlu’s Lausanne visit underlined Turkey’s desire to play a leading role in "influencing the decision-making processes in the international sports community."

Bach had gone to Istanbul, we stated, "reportedly to discuss a proposed bid for the 2036 Olympics and Paralympics".

One thing I doubt future Istanbul bids will require is the familiarity with the oeuvre of American rock and roll trailblazer Chuck Berry which representatives of all three Candidate Cities demonstrated 10 years ago, in the wee small hours of what was to be their big day, at the bar of the Buenos Aires Hilton.

As closing-time loomed, one IOC member with a vote launched into a rendition of the Berry classic My Ding a Ling, leaving vote-hunters of various nationalities with little option but to join in gamely with the chorus, to the bemusement of the late-night bar staff.

It was a memorable scene, even if it did little to further the serious-minded image that the IOC likes to project to the outside world.

Nevertheless, if Olympism at its best is about building bridges, this was a little gem.