President of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine Serhiy Bubka ha said that his program as a candidate for president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) impressed the IOC members, giving him confidence ahead of the elections on September 10.

"First, if we were not confident of victory, we wouldn't take this road. Secondly, today I hear from many competent members of IOC, from my colleagues and friends, that I have a very strong, innovative program. The presentation of the program got some good responses. We'll certainly see who wins on September 10. Each of six candidates deserves to head the International Olympic Committee," he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Bubka said that one of the key items of his program is the involvement of young people in sport and physical activity."Today they [youth] don't get enough exercise, which causes obesity, diabetes and other diseases, which are connected with a lack of physical exercise. Moreover, I proposed to create a youth council at the IOC that consists of talented young people, who could bring ideas to help us to speak to the younger generation in a common language. We must be interested and find out what young people want, and then we'll build our policy properly and move in the right direction," he said.

The candidate for IOC leader also mentioned the importance of continuing to firmly combat doping, illegal fees, and manipulations of sports results. According to him, it's undoubtedly, very important to give an opportunity to as many as possible counties and cities in various corners of the world to host the Olympic Games. The Olympic program should be interesting, modern and popular," he said.

Moreover, Bubka said he would help to develop national Olympic committees and international federations."I propose to allocate extra money to determine the best national Olympic committee for it to be an example to follow, the best international federation, which makes a huge contribution to sport's development. There should be a motivation, and here healthy sporting competition is necessary," the NOC president said.

Bubka said he supports the attraction of prominent international personalities from various sectors of life to promotion of the Olympic movement."To take, for example, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Jordan…These people form the ideology and philosophy of life today. We should attract them to help us to promote and develop the Olympic movement. Because today there is a very important task: to attract for the Olympic movement various groups of the population and integrate them into the various sectors of society's life," Bubka said.