The former Olympic yachtsman, 58, became the second of three heavyweight candidates to launch his public campaign to win the July vote to replace Juan Antonio Samaranch, who is retiring at a meeting in Moscow, the city where he got the job exactly 21 years ago.
South Korean Kim Un-yong, a 70-year-old former United Nations General Assembly delegate, told IOC members in a letter last Friday that he would run in what is expected to be a desperately close race between the three main candidates.
Canadian Dick Pound, the IOC's marketing supremo, has been keeping his counsel on whether he will join the race but Olympic sources believe he is definitely running and is expected to announce his candidacy at the start of April ahead of the April 16 deadline, three months before the vote.
The two other candidates who have put their names forward - former U.S. rower Anita DeFrantz and Hungary's ex-fencer Pal Schmitt - are not thought to have any chance of winning the race. DeFrantz is the only woman in the contest.
Rogge, who competed in the sailing at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics, was the IOC's chief coordinator at last year's successful Sydney Olympics and has shown composure in the same role in the problematic build-up to the next Summer Games in Athens in 2004.
Many see the former Belgium national team rugby player as the favourite, although he has a lot less experience in the organisation than Pound and cannot match Kim in terms of international contacts.
KEY ROLE
Former Olympic swimmer Pound, who joined the IOC in 1978, has played a key role in turning the Olympics into a commercial success in the last two decades by clinching lucrative sponsorship and television rights deals. He has a reputation for being tough and speaking his mind.
Rogge, by contrast, did not become an IOC member until 1991. But he has used his medical background as an orthopaedic surgeon to help the organisation with world sport's biggest problem - the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs.
The Belgian, who speaks fluent English and French, has won many allies in the organisation with his diplomacy and composure under pressure.
Both men, who are just two months apart in age, have a fierce contender in Kim, who has extensive contacts in international politics as well as in sport.
Kim, as head of the General Association of Sports Federations (GAISF), is an extremely influential figure. But his age could count against him and the South Korean also received a warning from the commission probing the Salt Lake City bribery scandal in 1998 and 1999.
The commission found a Salt Lake bid official had arranged to pay at least part of the salary of Kim's son when he worked for a U.S. company. Kim denied all knowledge of the arrangement and the commission said in a report that it could not prove otherwise.
In the biggest bribery scandal in Olympic history, 10 members left the IOC for breaking rules on accepting gifts from the U.S. city when it was bidding successfully for the 2002 Winter Games.
Reuters
