Late Wednesday night, members of the International Olympic Committee gathered for a dinner at the Olympic Museum on the banks of Lake Geneva. The next morning, they would see presentations from seven candidates vying to be their leader, a role that would by most measures be the most important in international sports.

At the closed-doors gathering, the outgoing president, Thomas Bach, ensured that the members present — the people who determine who will eventually lead the I.O.C. — were kept apart from the candidates. It was, he said perhaps jokingly, so they could enjoy their meals in peace.

It was a scene in keeping with the quirky and sometimes stifling rules of an election that will be decided when I.O.C. members vote in March at a resort in southern Greece.

The winner will assume leadership of the organization that controls the Olympics, an event that is as prestigious as it is expensive, and a diplomatic status higher than any other figure in the sports world. But many of the candidates have been critical of the thicket of rules and regulations surrounding the election that they say have hindered their ability to get their message across not only to I.O.C. members but also the wider world.

Candidates are barred from holding debates, voicing opposition regarding a rival’s vision for the I.O.C. or even receiving public endorsements from members.

“What we are looking at as candidates is to become the president of the largest sports movement in the world, and I think, in fairness, transparency and integrity, the world has a right to know who is running and what they stand for,” Prince Faisal bin Al Hussein, one of the candidates, said, in a strikingly direct statement in the protocol heavy world of the 130-year-old organization.

The institution draws its members from the world of sports and beyond, with federation heads rubbing shoulders with leaders from commerce, politics, show business and — like in the case of Prince Faisal — global royalty. Princess Anne, the younger sister of England’s King Charles III, heads the nominations committee for what has been described as the most exclusive club in the world. (There are currently 110 members.)

Prince Faisal is the only bona fide royal among the seven candidates vying for the presidency. But he’s joined by what counts as I.O.C. aristocracy in the form of the Spanish businessman Juan Antonio Samaranch, whose father led the organization for two decades through 2001 and shaped much of what it has become. Also running are four leaders of sports federations, including Sebastian Coe, the gold medal-winning Olympic runner-turned-head of international track and field. And for the first time there is a female candidate: Kirsty Coventry, an Olympic champion swimmer from Zimbabwe, who would also be the first person from Africa to lead the I.O.C.

For such a consequential election, much of it is taking place in the dark, away from any form of public (or private) debate.

The morning after the dinner at the museum, the candidates — all staying at the luxury Lausanne Palace, the longtime haunt of the I.O.C., which has a suite named for the elder Samaranch — were taken in black Mercedes minivans to the organization’s headquarters at intervals corresponding with the order in which they were to deliver 15-minute presentations. It was the first and only opportunity for them to speak to the entire membership. Officials had to hand over their cellphones, recordings were not permitted and members were not allowed to ask questions.

The scene and the secrecy prompted more than one official to fume at the process being more akin to a papal conclave, when the selection of a new pope after a secret vote by a gathering of cardinals is confirmed with white smoke emanating from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

After presenting his vision to the members who, like the Catholic cardinals, will vote in secret, Mr. Samaranch said in an interview that he would have loved to have had a recording of his speech. After all, he said, it was “the speech of my life.”

Still, sitting in a room bearing not only his father’s name but also a large portrait of him, Mr. Samaranch, a member of the I.O.C.’s top board since 2012, said he had not taken the time to challenge the rules of the election, most of which, he said, he disagreed with.

Under the regulations, contact time with voters is severely limited. In-person meetings, beyond the two days in Lausanne, are tightly controlled, with strict requirements to give advanced notice of any such contact to the I.O.C.’s ethics body. Phone calls are allowed.

“Nonsense,” said Morinari Watanabe, a long-shot candidate from Japan who leads global gymnastics, as the members were chauffeured away after the presentations. The next time they will all be together is on the eve of the vote.

Mr. Watanabe’s ideas include turning the Olympic Games into a 24-hour enterprise across five continents and renaming the I.O.C. Those are revolutionary thoughts for an organization whose approach to change can be glacial compared with the corporate world.

“The Olympic movement is a powerful movement,” said Mr. Coe, easily the most recognizable of the candidates beyond the clubby world of sports politics. “It should be the thought leadership in sport, it should be setting the tone and style, and, my goodness, there is nothing like the Olympic Games.”

The winner will control an organization that generates almost $8 billion per four-year Olympic cycle. But perhaps more important, the role is considered the top diplomat in sports, a bridge in an increasingly fractious world, with a prize in the Summer Olympics for which great powers vie. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s leader, was the first to call Thomas Bach after his election in 2013.

Most members refused to offer any insight into whom they were thinking of voting for, or even basic questions about what characteristics they would like to see in a candidate. Luis Mejia Oviedo, a delegate from the Dominican Republic, sitting in the oak-trimmed lobby of the Lausanne Palace, only smiled and offered a handshake as a response to each of three questions about the election.

Syed Shahid Ali, a Pakistani who has been an I.O.C. member for almost 30 years, said debate within the movement had slowly eroded, giving members little say in crucial decisions. That has been a regular critique of the organization under Mr. Bach, a former German fencer.

“The I.O.C. is an autonomous body but quite private in one sense,” Mr. Ali said as he watched an attendant open a door for Prince Albert II of Monaco to enter a chauffeur-driven Lexus and make his departure. “It controls world sport, so from that sense it’s not all that private. But from the inner workings of how it functions — that is quite private.”

Many of the candidates, including Mr. Samaranch and Ms. Coventry, are established members of the I.O.C.’s top board and have vowed to give members a greater voice again. That includes having a say in the organization’s most important choice: where the Olympics will take place. Under Mr. Bach, that choice has largely been taken away, with the members evaluating just one preferred candidate put forward by the I.O.C. leadership.

“They should have said it much earlier,” Mr. Ali said. “It shows lack of courage of convictions or the fact it might be an afterthought or it might be that it’s only applicable now you’re a candidate.”

With a largely inscrutable and diverse electorate, forecasting front-runners is a tricky task. There has been speculation that Ms. Coventry, who recently became a mother for the second time, has the backing of the incumbent Mr. Bach. “I think he’s being very fair to all of us,” Ms. Coventry told a news conference capped at 10 minutes per candidate after their pitches. “I don’t feel that he is out campaigning for me.”

For the winner, there will be a bulging to-do list, with a notable focus on the United States, where the biggest television contract requires updating after a decade; the national antidoping agency is in the midst of an increasingly acrimonious war with the global antidoping regulator; and the next Summer Olympics — in Los Angeles in 2028 — is being planned under a mercurial Trump administration.

“These are big challenges, they’ll be in my in-tray if I am successful,” Mr. Coe said.

With votes to be secured, candidates now face a race against time to press their case. Mr. Samaranch hoped to gather a few stragglers before they left for their homes, businesses and palaces around the world. Smiling and making a lasso-like gesture, he hoped to gather as many as he could for dinner.

A teenage girl died on Monday after being bitten by a shark while swimming at a popular beach in Queensland on Australia’s eastern coast, according to the authorities.

The teenager, Charlize Zmuda, had been in the water off Woorim Beach, a surf spot about 45 miles north of Brisbane, when she was attacked by the shark just before 5 p.m.

Paramedics rushed to treat Ms. Zmuda, 17, who had sustained “life-threatening upper body injuries,” the Queensland Ambulance Service said in a statement. She died on the beach from her injuries, according to the Queensland police.

It was unclear what kind of shark attacked Ms. Zmuda. The beach was closed until further notice, Surf Life Saving Queensland, the state’s aquatic rescue group, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Queensland Police said in a statement that it would prepare a report for the coroner on the encounter.

Ms. Zmuda, a student, had grown up swimming in the area and was a skilled lifeguard, according to her family and Surf Life Saving Queensland. Ms. Zmuda had helped lead a patrol group and volunteered for a program teaching children ocean rescue skills, her family said. She was also musically talented, they said, and sang and played several instruments.

“She loved the beach, and it was truly was her happiest place on earth,” her family said in a statement shared with local media. “She loved four-wheel-driving up the beach, and anyone who went with her knew they would have to stop and pick up every piece of rubbish she saw along the way.”

The beach is one of many along the state’s coastline that has installed drumlines — an offshore system of shark population control that uses buoys and baits to catch sharks and then release them.

“A strong swimmer, a skilled lifesaver and someone who knew the ocean well — yet nothing could have prepared her, her family, or any of us for what happened,” a swim club she attended said in a social media tribute, calling her death a “cruel and unfathomable twist of fate.”

Dave Whimpey, the chief executive of Surf Life Saving Queensland, called it “shocking and confronting news,” in an interview with the A.B.C. Though such attacks were rare, he said, this one had a “huge impact on the lifesaving community right around Australia.”

Thousands of people attended a tribute for Ms. Zmuda on Tuesday, the day after she died. Her father, Steve Zmuda, said in an interview with the A.B.C. that they did not want the attack to discourage beachgoers. “It’s a big part of our lives,” he said.

Australia, like the United States, is a relative hot spot for shark attacks, though they are rare — and fatal attacks even rarer. In 2024, there were at least four shark encounters, according to the Taronga Conversation Society Australia, which tracks such events. In another fatal episode in December, a 40-year-old man died while spearfishing on an island off the Central Queensland coast. In July, a surfer survived an attack by a great white shark off the coast of New South Wales, but lost his leg.

For the past 10 years, there have been about 20 shark encounters each year where people are injured, the conservation society said.

As part of her deal with President Trump to stave off steep tariffs on Mexico for a month, President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged to send 10,000 additional members of the country’s National Guard to the border to “prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl.”

The deal is likely to put a lot of pressure on the National Guard, a force that is just a few years old and was recently put under the control of Mexico’s military.

Unlike in the United States, there is no dedicated border patrol in Mexico. Because immigration officers are barred from carrying guns, Mexico relies on the military and National Guard to police the border, said Jonathan Maza, a Mexico-based security analyst.

In recent years, Mexico has relied heavily on the National Guard to help curb illegal migration into the United States. In 2019, under pressure from Mr. Trump over migration, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the country’s then-president and Ms. Sheinbaum’s mentor, sent National Guard troops to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.

Now that force, which has a total of about 130,000 members, is being asked to help more with stopping the flow of drugs north.

Ms. Sheinbaum said the 10,000 members would be pulled from other areas of the country, without providing specifics. She also would not say how much this would cost. The Mexican government said on Tuesday that the troops had already been redeployed to 18 cities and towns along the U.S. border.

If the National Guard is deployed to cities like Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo, places that have struggled with security and the flow of illicit drugs, Mr. Maza said, “it will help a lot to combat or stop or dissuade drug trafficking.” But he said it would be important for U.S. and Mexican officials to share more intelligence and information to stop the flow of drugs.

Ms. Sheinbaum highlighted on Monday the fact that both countries had vowed to work together to tackle not only drugs moving north but illegal guns flowing south, which have ended up in the hands of organized crime groups in Mexico.

She also said the National Guard would help with overall security at the border.

The National Guard was created in 2019 to fight crime, but last September, Mexican legislators amended the Constitution to put it under the military’s control. Critics have said the move gave the military, which has faced many allegations of human rights abuses, too much control over public security and civilian life.

Given the importance to Mexico of avoiding tariffs, Mr. Maza said, the National Guard can help show short- to medium-term results. But he warned that criminal groups adapt.

Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, a drug policy researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego, said that where the troops are deployed would be critical.

“If you’re only going to have them at the border, that doesn’t address the entire fentanyl production chain,” she said. “It’s not like production is all happening at the border, and we know that it happens in other parts of the country.”

Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, is expected to discuss the future of Syria-Turkey relations on Tuesday during a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

The meeting in the Turkish capital, Ankara, will be Mr. Erdogan’s first with Mr. al-Shara, the rebel leader who led the opposition offensive that toppled Syria’s former autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad, last month.

Both countries have a lot riding on the future of their relationship.

Turkey shares a long border with Syria, hosts more than three million Syrian refugees who fled during the country’s 13-year civil war and had chilly relations with Mr. al-Assad for years before Mr. Erdogan began speaking of mending ties not long before his ouster. Turkey worries that instability in Syria could cause more refugees to flee or prevent those already in Turkey from returning home.

Turkey also has military posts in northwestern Syria, directly backs Syrian armed groups near the border and considers a Kurdish-led militia in the northeast a grave national security threat.

For Mr. al-Shara, who was appointed interim president last week by a group of rebel leaders, Turkey could provide critical support as he faces the monumental tasks of unifying Syria, reviving its battered economy and transforming a constellation of militias into a national army.

Turkey has been interacting with armed groups that Mr. al-Shara has led since early in the war because they controlled significant territory along Turkey’s southern border, and Turkish officials were among the first to visit him in Damascus after Mr. al-Assad’s fall.

But Turkey, struggling to fix its own economy after years of populist spending and persistently high inflation, would struggle to provide Syria with the financing it needs to restart the economy and begin rebuilding communities that were reduced to rubble during the war.

So Mr. al-Shara has also worked to build ties with the United States, European countries and Gulf Arab leaders. Last week, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, became the first head of state to visit Mr. al-Shara in Damascus. And on Monday, Mr. al-Shara met in Saudi Arabia with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler. To what extent these leaders will help fund the new Syria remains to be seen.

Mr. al-Shara, a former member of Al Qaeda, announced a public break with the group years ago and now expresses more moderate Islamist views. He faces the additional hurdles of heavy sanctions imposed on Syria to punish the Assad regime and the fact that he and the militia he leads remain classified as terrorist by the United States and other countries.

Turkey, too, still classifies Mr. al-Shara’s militia, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as a terrorist organization.